


Golden Age of Illustration

by Cryo_Bucky



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artist Bucky, Artist Steve, Assumed Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, M/M, PTSD, Period-Typical Homophobia, Switching, bucky is sent home before the mission in the alps, post-war AU, so much art, soft boys making a new life for themselves, some historical events are moved slightly for plot, steve walks it off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:36:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryo_Bucky/pseuds/Cryo_Bucky
Summary: An AU inspired by J. C. Leyendecker, a successful american illustrator who did mostly advertisements and magazine cover illustrations and is the most famous for his Arrow Collar ads. He was gloriously gay and lived a happy, undiscovered life with his lover who often modeled for him. Following Bucky (and eventually Steve) as they return from the war and try to make a life for themselves.





	1. Bucky Gets Home

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally here! My Captain America Reverse Big Bang fic for 2018! I couldn't be more excited about this one and have many people to thank.  
> Firstly [ Helene](https://misspaperjoker.tumblr.com) for providing the amazing art and idea to start it all as well as being such an enthusiastic cohort.  
> Secondly the ever-patient [ NurseDarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NurseDarry) for beta-ing my mess. This fic would have been a real disaster zone without her help. I'll remember: FIRST PERSON!  
> and lastly all the lovely people who helped and encouraged me in the RBB Slack group and the amazing mods for making everything run so smoothly. If you're looking for a fun bang to work on I can't recommend this one highly enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy the art feel free to go and send [ Helene](https://misspaperjoker.tumblr.com) nice messages on her tumblr! She's a joy and this fic wouldn't have happened without her!

[](http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180617/xizvq696.jpg)  


Bucky is asleep, pressed against the railing of the ship and curled against his pack, when a shout goes up and ripples across the men on the deck. He starts awake, sitting up and twisting to look across the bay, pulling himself up with his right arm and grinning at the sight before him as the men around him cheer and hug each other. The Statue of Liberty greets them as they pull into the bay, and Bucky feels his eyes prick with tears as he spies the Brooklyn Bridge. He’s so close to home now. The man next to him nudges his shoulder in his excitement and Bucky turns to throw his good arm around him, holding his left close to his body in a way that’s becoming second nature. 

“Can’t believe we made it,” Bucky whispers to himself as he brushes his bangs out of his eyes while the sea spray threatens to soak him again. Closing his fingers around the familiar weight of his dog tags in the center of his chest, he sends a silent prayer for everyone that didn’t make it, and for Steve. 

_please, let Steve come home to me soon._

He hoists his bag onto his shoulder, prepared to wait patiently for them to disembark. The men are chattering excitedly amongst themselves, gesturing animatedly and pulling trinkets from their pockets that remind them of home, lockets and wallet photos. Most of them will go straight to the train stations to continue their journey. Bucky only has to wait long enough for the subway. There are a myriad of emotions on everyone’s faces, exhaustion and excitement, but also the terrifying blankness that some guys adopted after a particularly bad fight. Bucky knows how they feel sometimes. 

The ride on the subway is a strange one, he ducks his head and holds tightly to his bag. It’s not that he’s avoiding the faces around him, but he hopes they talk to him. His blue Commandos coat, embroidered with its tiny wing on his shoulder, doesn’t immediately paint a target on him. He has no idea how people will see him, now that he’s back from Europe. Sent home early, only a little mangled. He shakes his head, picking himself up when the doors of the car open. He makes it quite a few blocks before someone notices him at all. 

“Bucky?” A tiny voice cuts through the din around him. It had become a dull roar, and would probably take him a while to get used to again. There is a boy staring up at him with big eyes, and it takes Bucky a long moment to place him. Mrs. Clardon’s son- Rudy? No. Rudy would be older by now, this must be Tommy. 

“Wow Bucky, it is you! I didn’t know you were comin’ back!” The kid bounces up to him. “We sure missed ya.” 

Bucky hopes that his smile is convincing, it feels a little tight on his face, not quite how it should be. “You got so big, was I really gone that long?” How long had he been gone? It seemed like his whole lifetime had passed, but it had been… less than two years? It doesn’t seem possible. 

“Bucky?” Tommy’s tiny voice cuts him out of his thoughts and Bucky looks down at him again. 

“Sorry, I’m just real tired from the trip. Was goin’ home to see my family.” He reaches down to ruffle Tommy’s hair, a pang of memory rushing through him at the familiar motion. 

Tommy trails after him as he continues his trek toward home, and it isn’t long before Bucky is surrounded by seemingly every kid in the neighborhood. All of them are badgering him to tell them about the war- about what Europe was like, did he kill anyone? What happened to his arm? Did he get to meet Captain America? He fields their questions the best he can, pointedly leaving out all the horrible stuff: Europe was very wet, he didn’t see much of the countryside that wasn’t dug up into trenches. Yes, he has killed some people, and it was terrible. His arm was broken- that was the easiest way to explain it. And Captain America… 

By the time he can finally see his family’s apartment he’s amassed quite the entourage, and he’s feeling almost giddy, his exhaustion nearly forgotten at the excitement of finally being home. He sees a familiar little face poking out of the front window, and soon enough hears the shrieks of his sisters racing down the stairs. He drops his bag once he gets close, kneeling down and throwing his good arm out to catch his sister Winnie as she barrels down the stoop and crashes into him. Becca and Sarah aren’t far behind, all of them covering him in a hug so tight he can feel tears spring to his eyes. He honestly hadn’t expected to see them again. He buries his face in Winnie’s soft curls and takes a few breaths, trying to keep himself together. When he finally looks up it’s to see his mother clutching to the doorframe, looking as though she’s seen a ghost. Bucky extracts himself from the girls, pulling his mother into an equally tight hug. She’d gotten so thin, but she still smelled like the rose water she always daubed on her wrists in the morning. He’d missed them so much.  
When he finally lets go he steps back, back to hoping his smile was convincing. “Hey ma.” 

She clings to him for a moment before stepping away to look him over. “You could have written us, we didn’t even have any warning you were coming home.” 

Bucky settles his good hand on his hip, leaving the other tucked into his pocket. “I would have written if I could. Got sent home kind of suddenly.” He could see the concern behind her eyes. “But I’m here now. Gosh, I missed you guys.”  
“Good thing you got here just in time for dinner. Come on inside girls.” Winifred Barnes was never one to mince words, turning sharply to the kids still gathered on the sidewalk. “And all of you, shoo! You all should be home anyway.” The kids scatter as she flaps the towel tucked into her skirt at them, giggling and shouting to each other. 

Becca nudges Bucky with her hip as she steps past into the house, Winnie and Sarah trailing behind her. Bucky feels the overwhelming fondness threaten to choke him again, and he swallows thickly before following them in after going to retrieve his pack. It’s just so good to be home. 

Things settle into a routine he remembers once they’re all upstairs. Becca helps Winnifred pour soup into bowls, Winnie sets the table, and Sarah digs out the other dining chair from the other room. They hadn’t needed it in a while, and Bucky thanks her as he sinks into it after shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on the back. It’s leagues more comfortable than a bench seat, or the ground. 

“What happened to your arm, Buck?” Sarah has pulled her chair up close to his, examining him closely. The clinking of bowls stops suddenly and Bucky can see that their ma has opened her mouth to scold Sarah, but he gives her a look before she can get the words out. 

“I messed it up. Can’t move my hand the way I used to be able to, and it gets stiff, but I should be able to work it back into shape.” The nurses had murmured something about nerve damage, and while the pain had mostly subsided, he would need a while to regain his fine motor control in that hand. Sometimes it felt more like he had a club attached to his shoulder than an arm. He sets his hand on the table, palm up. “It doesn’t even look any different.” 

She tentatively reaches out to touch his hand, running her fingers over his palm. He stays still, trying not to cringe from the strange feeling of the nerves firing wrong. He doesn’t know what it is, but there’s was just something wrong with it. He’s glad for his long sleeves to hide the ugly track marks from whatever HYDRA had pumped him full off, and pricked him with. Now isn’t the time to worry about it. 

Winnie sets down a bowl of soup in front of him and saves him from having to do anything else. “Good thing you’ve always been able to use both hands then.” She says, and Bucky snorts a laugh.  
Becca took her seat on the other side of him. “I remember how mad the teachers would get at your terrible handwriting in school. Can you still write both ways?” 

“Yeah, and my writing is terrible with both hands.” Bucky puts his left hand back in his pocket, sighing happily at his first mouthful of soup. He has missed his ma’s cooking from the very first day away, and a real hot meal that isn’t Army rations is nearly enough to set him crying again. 

They settle into a warm quiet as everyone eats, Sarah and Winnie jabbing at each other under the table, and Becca quietly pulling the crust off her bread and passing it to Bucky to sop up his broth. 

Winnie and Sarah are both doing their homework in the living room instead of upstairs in their room when Bucky curls up in his dad’s old leather chair, feeling like he might sink through the floor at any moment. It isn’t long before Becca joins him, muscling her way into the chair with him, though they haven’t both fit into it comfortably since they were tiny. Bucky lets her curl against him, soaking up her warmth and letting a sense of calm fill his chest. No one asks him to say anything, doesn’t badger him about the things he’d done over in Europe.  
Eventually they’ll ask, and maybe by then he’ll be ready to tell them, but he’s glad for now that he can just be present. Home. 

He misses Steve terribly. 

It isn’t long before Becca is asleep, snuggled up into the crook of his side, breath tickling his neck. He can hardly keep his own eyes open, and he blinks hard to keep them from sliding shut. Winnie and Sarah had put up a token protest when Winifred had shooed them off to bed, making Bucky promise to come and see them tomorrow after school. Bucky gently nudges his eldest sister, scooting out from under her. She blinks at him sleepily, but accepts his excuse of the late hour. He needs to go home before he’s asleep on his feet. 

Winifred stops him before he can sneak out, touching his face tenderly and pushing a neatly folded sack of what he assumes is some breakfast into his arms. “You can always come and eat with us, don’t be a stranger.” They both know the _please_ is there, hanging at the end of her sentence. 

“The girls are so much bigger. I didn’t think I was gone that long.” Bucky leans against the doorframe, setting the sack gently on his meager pile of belongings to come home with him. 

“They missed you. I’m so glad you’re back.” Bucky’s never heard his ma sound so earnest. She had always ruled them with an iron fist and a quick wit, and to see her looking so tired unsettles him. He was back now, he would help her as much as he could. 

“You got all the money I sent you?” He digs in his pocket for his last pair of Chesterfield cigarettes. He’d have to buy some more now that he was back, if he could get ahold of them. He wordlessly holds one out to his mother, pulling the door open and stepping out into the crisp evening. She would have his hide if he smoked inside. 

They stand quietly for a few moments after he lights them both, looking out into the darkened street. 

“We got the money. You shouldn’t have, we would have been fine.” Winifred blows out a long stream of smoke before continuing. “What are you planning to do now?” 

Bucky shrugs, taking another drag from his own cigarette. “Go home, sleep for a few days probably, then get back to it. Gotta take care of myself. Steve-” He cuts himself off, biting his lip.  
“Steve sent us a few letters. They were even more vague than yours.” She’s clearly sizing him up, waiting for him to spill the beans like he had when he was a little boy.  
Bucky sighed. “Steve is….an idiot. I’ll tell you about it, I swear, but not tonight. For now...Steve is alright. At least he was when I left.”  
She nods, putting out the butt of her cigarette against the bricks of the building and pulling him into another hug.  
When he finally goes, Bucky salutes her, grinning and shooting a wink before he turns to head back toward his apartment. 

The familiar path to his apartment from home seems to take eons. The exhaustion he had been fighting since this morning on the ship finally taking its toll. By the time he gets to his block he’s struggling not to drag his feet. The trudge up the stairs feels like it takes years off his life, and he shakes himself once he reaches the top, kicking over the brick that hides their spare key. He’d left his key with Steve, and… now it was probably in the hands of the government. There are a pile of letters awaiting him on the welcome mat, and he bends to gather them up, rifling through them as he unlocks the door. 

  
[](http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180618/i6blvoav.jpg)  


They’re all from Steve. He must have started writing from the moment that Bucky left, for them to have beat him home. V-mail was an impressive thing afterall. A brief stab of guilt at not letting his family know he was coming back plagues him as he steps inside the dark and musty apartment. While the rent has evidently been paid it is clear that nothing else has been touched. At the bottom of the pile is an envelope of thick cardstock, and on the back is the SSR insignia. 

Well then, Stark must have been expecting him home. As eager as he is to read Steve’s letters, he tears open the SSR letter first, sweeping a layer of dust off the old kitchen table before sitting down on the wooden chair butted up against the counter. It’s a very official document, with a letterhead and everything. It says what Bucky suspected, Stark and the SSR had kept up payments for Bucky and Steve’s apartment, he even has the next two months paid in order to get himself back together without having to worry about that. As much as it leaves a bad taste in his mouth to accept charity of any kind, he has worked for it, so why not. His left arm tingles as if to remind him.  
Steve’s letters are another matter. Clearly they were regular V-mail, neatly printed on perfectly uniform paper, information obviously and ham-handedly redacted to the point that a few of them are hardly legible. Steve’s slanted block print is just the same as it had been before, though it’s clear he had been careful to write as legibly as possible. The prickle of annoyance at someone combing through Steve’s letters to him stays at the back of Bucky’s mind as he sets about spreading them out on the table. 

_“Hey Buck,_  
I hope you made it safe. Me and the guys miss you already. We’ve been busy, but I know I can’t tell you what we’ve been up to. It’s been [redacted] too. I hope your ma and sisters are well, give them my love. I’ll leave it up to you to tell them. It didn’t seem right for me to do it. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I’ll keep writing you. Hopefully [redacted].”  
Steve 

Bucky can’t help but smile, his exhaustion waning for a moment as he imagines Steve hunched over a crate and trying to write as neatly as possible with a stub of a pencil, the rest of the Howlies ribbing him about writing to Bucky in what’s likely just hours of him shipping out. He misses them. Maybe in a few days hell take some change to the post office and see how much it would be to send each of the boys a letter. 

Taking the time to hang his coat on the rack by the door Bucky mechanically unfolds his duffel, sorting through the items and eyeing the food his ma had sent him home with. He’ll read the rest of the letters in the morning when the light is better. After toeing off his boots he digs into the bottom of his duffel to pull out his rifle. Only Howard knows he’d taken it with him, had offered to send him home with a new fancy scope for it too, but Bucky had turned him down. Stark had cleared the way for him to take his favorite rifle. It had been customized for him after all, Howard had insisted he may as well take it. Bucky had to admit it felt good in his hands, even if he almost hates that it does. Rolling his good shoulder Bucky pushes the door open to the bedroom, almost overwhelmed by the nostalgia of being _home_. He misses Steve, like a sharp pain in his chest, a rib that has been removed. Even if things were different now, and they sure are different now, being away from Steve is...wrong. 

After carefully sliding the rifle under the edge of the bed Bucky returns to gather up Steve’s letters from the table, carefully arranging them on the bedside table before stripping his pants off and crawling into bed. The lights from the streetlamps outside have been doused; they have to keep the lights down in case of an attack, but despite that Bucky feels equal parts exposed and enclosed. It had been a long time since he’s slept in a bed, and the sheets have long since lost their familiarity. Tomorrow would have to be spent cleaning, there was enough dust to make even his eyes water. Pulling the blanket over his head, he wills himself to sleep, trying to push past the sensation that he’s going to sink through the mattress and into the floor. 

 

 

The crack of a gun wakes Bucky in the early hours of the morning, and in a flash he’s down on the floor, rifle at the ready and heart pounding with panic. When there are several long seconds of silence, Bucky slowly lowers his gun, trying to orient himself as the room swims around him. He’s home. There’s no way there’d been a gunshot. Keeping low to the ground Bucky peers out the tiny window, watching a pair of men struggle with a car, the hood up and smoke pouring from the engine. A car backfire? As if in answer, the car bangs loudly again as one of the men tries to start it, leaving Bucky on the floor and engulfed in panic again. God damnit, he knows what it is. 

“Get yourself together Barnes…” Bucky murmurs as he forces himself to loosen his grip on his rifle, putting it back under the bed after resetting the safety. “Christ, it’s only your first day back.” 

Once he’s gotten up off the floor Bucky peers into the small mirror stuck to the opposite wall, running his fingers through his hair and sighing as it stands almost straight up, despite his best efforts. Who did he have to impress today anyway? 

Pulling on a pair of pajama pants out of habit, Bucky plods out into the main room once more, stopping to turn on the kitchen tap, and cringing at the red-brown sludge that spits at him. Well. Let it run for a minute maybe. After retrieving a fork from the drawer Bucky unwraps the leftovers his ma had sent him home with, and crawls back into bed to eat them, snatching the next of Steve’s letters from the bedside table. Ice for the icebox is on his list today, and maybe some food to go in it. Definitely some beer and smokes. 

_Hey Buck,_  
_Dugan says it’s ridiculous for me to write you so often, since you’re not even gonna be home by the time these get here, but I don’t know how much longer we’ll be [redacted]. Besides [redacted] and it’s sunny for once. Morita nearly got himself bitten by a forest snake, honestly I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as that man when he saw a tiny snake crawl out of his boot. Write me when you do get home, hopefully I’ll get it. Try to take care of yourself too._

The idea of Steve Rogers telling him to take care of himself sets Bucky laughing, and he has to sprawl out on the bed and laugh what is likely far too hard at the idea, head thrown back. That’s his job, to tell Steve to stop being such an idiot, oh how the tides had turned after all. Once he’s contained himself, he wipes at his eyes and continues to read. 

The war might be over soon, but really what do I know? As far as I know it could go on forever. I can be hopeful though right?  
Steve 

Bucky nibbles at his breakfast and combs through the other two letters Steve had sent him, two of them from the same day. If he isn’t careful, the SSR are going to cut him off from sending them. The mental image of an entire v-mail plane filled with letters from Steve makes him snort out another laugh. Better not think that too hard or the idiot might hear him all the way over in Europe.  
Once his stomach is full Bucky forces himself out of bed, despite the pull to laze around all day. The water is a little clearer now, and Bucky splashes some on the back of his neck, using a little more to wrangle his hair out of his face before pulling on an undershirt and mentally preparing himself to tidy the place up. Everything is almost exactly the way he’d left it the night he’d shipped out. The only difference is Steve’s things are missing, mostly his books, and what looked like a few pairs of socks. The image of the New-and-Improved Steve trying to squeeze into the tiny slacks that are folded so neatly in the dresser leaves Bucky doubled over laughing again. He feels a tad hysterical, and honestly it’s either laugh or break down again, lose himself to the blankness that he’d fought against since Azzano. So he could laugh if he wanted. 

Cleaning the apartment takes longer than he expects, but he manages to get the windows open, and even gets a breeze through the place, though he knows it’ll be cold as hell by the time the sun starts going down. It’s just not reached the warm part of the year yet. He’s glad that the snow is gone; just the thought of spending more time in the snow makes him feel jittery. No more snow for him for a lifetime. The work is slow, with only limited use of his left arm, and he gets so frustrated when the _fucking couch won’t just work with him_ that he has to sit down on the floor and reconsider his approach. He stares blankly at his left arm, fingers slowly curling and uncurling as he tries to work the tingles out. It goes weak at the strangest times, sometimes throbbing up into his shoulder. Fucking HYDRA. He hopes that Steve personally killed every one of them. He can’t think on it too long, or the feeling of cold steel against his back creeps in, and his vision starts to tunnel. He can’t think about it. Can’t think about Austria, or the memory of the searing pain of whatever they had stuck him with would leave him shaking. 

Turning on the radio helps, lets him focus on something besides his swirling thoughts. It’s easy to lose himself in the music for a few hours, let his mind be blissfully blank. He doesn’t realize how long it’s been until there’s a knock on his door. He pulls the chain off the door and opens it to find Becca standing there with another casserole dish in her hands. 

Stepping aside to let her in, Bucky bustles around to clear off the counter from where he’d been, maybe obsessively, reorganizing their few pots and pans. 

“Wow Becks, you didn’t have to bring me lunch too,” Bucky said, though his stomach growls anyway. So much for his plan to go shopping. 

“This is dinner.” Becca corrects him. “You’ve been at it all day, clearly. Take a break and eat something.” 

Bucky doesn’t argue further as he settles himself at the table and digs into the still-warm casserole. Boy, his ma sure did spoil him. 

Becca is watching him eat with fondness in her eyes, and Bucky isn’t quite sure what to make of it, so he swallows around a too-big bite and smiles as best he can. 

“It’s really good to see you, Becks. What’ve you been up to?” 

She looks unimpressed by his attempts at small talk, but concedes after a moment, settling onto another chair. 

“I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard. I took an afternoon job in Brooklyn Heights, but really there’s not enough work to go around, still. I don’t know how much you boys were told about the home-front. We’re here to help you as much as we can. Mostly we’re just glad to have you back. Charlie told me-” 

“Charlie?” Bucky’s fork is frozen halfway to his mouth, and he squints at his sister. “Charlie sounds like a fella’s name.” 

“Ha, very funny. It’s a bit early for the ‘My little sister isn’t allowed to have a fella’ routine, isn’t it Bucky? You’ve only been here one full day.” Becca scoffs. She has him pinned, and Bucky can’t help but grin at her. “Yes, _Charlie_. He told me that things are really coming to a head over there. I’ve been reading the papers, it’s scary stuff.” She’s wringing her hands, clearly more worried than she’s letting on. 

Bucky sets his fork down, taking her hand. “You were honest with me, I’ll tell you, if you really want to know. It’s bad over there. Guys are dying left, right, and center. The films, they make it out to be...well, just something it’s not. It’s bloody and confusing and...it’s hell. But we gotta win, right? Shoot more of their guys than they can shoot ours.” 

Becca doesn’t look at all reassured by his claims, and Bucky knows his smile falls a little flat. They sit in silence for a long moment, both lost in thought. 

“So tell me about Charlie,” Bucky finally says, desperate to break the tension. 

He continues eating while Becca tells him about her new fella. Charlie doesn’t sound like a bad guy, all things considered. They’d been going steady for about eight months. He’d been excluded from the draft on account of he was deaf on one side from a fight he’d gotten into at school as a boy. Still, Bucky was going to have to go and size the guy up; it was one of his big jobs as the older brother. 

“He sounds like a good guy,” Bucky says while he washes his dishes in the sink, the radio back on and playing soft jazz as Becca sits sprawled out on his lumpy couch. “Bet he and Steve would get along.” 

Becca sits up at the mention of Steve, hands in her lap. “What about Steve? He sent us a letter from basic, but that’s all we ever heard. Did you see him?” 

Bucky isn’t really ready for this. He’s still wracking his brain to figure out where to start when the radio announces that it’s time for: _The Captain America Adventure Program!”_ Bucky nearly swallows his tongue. 

“Ugh, this show is just too much.” Becca stands up to switch off the radio, frowning slightly at Bucky when she sees the deer-in-the-headlights look he’s wearing. An embarrassing choked noise leaves Bucky’s throat and he sinks into the couch. She rushes over to him, worry written on her face, “Bucky, what?” 

“Steve is Captain America.” The words sound ridiculous even as Bucky says them, and he knows it’s true, has seen Steve, in person, and can confirm. Somehow that doesn’t really help. 

Becca is looking at him like he’s grown another head, her mouth opening and closing a few times but no actual words coming out. Then she’s laughing, like he’s just told the world's best joke. 

“Wow, you really must have gotten messed up over there, I mean c’mon Bucky.” She’s practically wheezing, but Bucky’s kept his face straight and her giggles taper off, “Wait, you’re...serious?” 

He doesn’t know all the details, just what Steve had told him, which he tries to relay to Becca in some semblance of order. She looks about as shocked as he had felt when Steve had first pulled him off that slab in Austria. 

“So Steve...was given some sort of super drug, and it turned him into...Captain America? Gosh.” Becca is frowning, “And they let him lead a whole unit of men? Honestly, did they...talk to him before they gave him this super-drug? They gave the most stubborn idiot on the planet the potential to lift a tank!” 

“Exactly!” Bucky exclaims as he throws up his hands, “Thank you! I said the exact same thing! They seemed so shocked and appalled that he wouldn’t listen to their orders!” 

Becca has tucked her hands back into her lap. “So he’s still over there? Fighting?” The worry was back in her gaze. 

“Yeah…” Bucky hangs his head. “I should have fought harder to stay. I can’t protect him from the other side of the Atlantic.” 

Becca gathers his hands up in hers, pressing a kiss to the knuckles of his left hand. “He’ll be fine. If he finally has the muscles to back up his big head, then he’ll win the war single-handed.” 

A laugh bubbles up from Bucky’s chest and he pulls his sister into a tight hug. “I can always hope.” 

After walking Becca back home and throwing a wave at their ma in the window before turning to make his way back home, Bucky’s thoughts are swirling. Becca had promised to explain things to the rest of their family, though she still looks like she’d been processing it herself. The guilt at leaving Steve there, even though he wasn’t alone, is eating at him. He should have fought harder when they’d said he had to go home. 

There is another letter waiting for him on the stoop when he gets home, and he gathers it up, keen to read it. 

_Hey Buck,_  
_I’ve been thinking a lot about home. I hope these letter are getting to you and you didn’t have to move. I shoulda thought of that. Write me back when you can so I know you got them, okay? Hope your arm isn’t giving you too much trouble. Have you been doing the exercises that the doctors recommended? I was thinking, maybe you could pick up drawing again. I know they said anything fiddly would help your nerves get back in shape. You always said you were no good at drawing but you’re full of it. They don’t have to be any good. Just a thought.  
Steve _

Arranging the letter with the rest of them on the bedside table, Bucky considers Steve’s words. Steve had always been better at drawing than him, had more patience for it. Bucky’s art isn’t bad per se, but Steve’s always looking at things in an interesting way, and always scribbling it down. He can try… What would be the harm? The drafting table that Steve had gotten from their art professor is one of Steve’s most prized possessions, and it takes some mental gymnastics for Bucky to talk himself into pulling up the up and sit in front of it. There wouldn’t be much light left for the day, but maybe he can scribble something. 

By the time the sun has completely set Bucky has a pile of balled-up papers and a wicked ache in his forearm from gripping his pencil too tightly. He hates everything that he’s drawn, it’s crude and shaky, and not at all what he had been hoping for. He goes to bed annoyed, rubbing at his arm and trying to work the numbness out of his fingers. He’ll write Steve a letter tomorrow, and maybe even include a sketch of just how bad his art really was. 

 

 

Bucky’s life starts to fall into a routine of sorts. Every morning he goes to the store to pick up the things he needs for the day, dutifully handing over his ration coupons and making sure to go and see his ma on the way home. She cooks him dinner on Thursdays and Sundays, and he helps Winnie and Sarah with their homework when they need it. 

On the way between his ma’s place and his apartment he passes by a newsstand. He’s always checking the headlines now, searching for even a small mention of Steve. The first week back he sends letters to Steve and each of the Howlies, but he doesn’t get much in return. Steve’s letters taper off and Bucky tries to resist the pull of disappointment every time he gets home without a letter on his stoop.  
He spends the warmest part of the day searching for a job. Work is still scarce, and with his messed-up arm Bucky’s just been moved to the bottom of the pile, but he has to find something. His last Army paycheck gets to him the next week, and he sits down to figure out how long it will last. At least his rent is paid for another month. He even writes to the SSR, willing to put aside some of his pride if it means they can pay him. He doesn’t get a reply. It’s hard to keep the bleak thoughts at bay, and Bucky finds himself thinking more and more about Steve. He misses him so much. But if there was one lesson he could learn from his best friend, it was how to be dog-stubborn until you got what you were after. 

In the evenings he sits hunched over Steve’s drafting table, sketching until his arm aches too badly to continue. Every day his hand seems to shake a little less, but his frustration stems more from the fact that he just can’t get the images right on the page. He needs more practice, but at least working to exhaustion keeps his nightmares at bay. During the weekends when he’s not helping the girls, he’ll sit around the house and sketch out objects, or try and catch his sisters’ likenesses when they’re playing or reading, or his ma when she’s stitching. It gives him something to do with his hands and keeps his mind busy. When none of his usual subjects strike his interest, he finds himself drawing Steve. Steve as he was, tiny and curled up in their bed, looking equally brittle and soft, or big and broad and luminous, gaze far away. Those sketches he keeps to himself, letting them litter his bedroom. He gets a little closer to Steve’s likeness each time. It makes his fondness prick sharply in his chest. There’s just something, the curve of his lips, or the swoop of his eyelashes, something he’s missing. 

At the beginning of April Bucky receives another letter from Steve, and his heart soars, until he tries to read it. It’s clear that Steve was trying to tell him something, but the censors had been at it for sure. 

_Hey Buck,_  
We’re going [redacted]. Hoping to strike a swift blow. I know I can’t tell you much. But you’ll get-  
Steve 

The entire bottom half of the letter is just...missing. Clipped out rather than waste the ink censoring it. Anger courses through him and Bucky takes a few breaths to resist the urge to tear the page up and throw it out the window. Whatever Steve’s doing, please let him be okay. 

He doesn’t get another letter, from anyone. He’s sure most of the boys would have sent replies, and he’s desperate for news, but none comes. Unless something had happened to the whole unit… just the thought makes him feel sick. No, surely there had to be something else. He resolves to wait until he hears something. 

  
[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/shc3r8to.jpg)  


It’s almost springlike. The last grip of winter is finally easing off, even if it’s only making room for rain. Bucky is glad that it’s only cloudy so far. He has more errands to run today, and his mind is racing with inspiration for art. He heard there was a real art store in Brooklyn Heights, and he had plans to make his way up there today to investigate. Maybe if he could find a job he’d treat himself with some good pencils. 

Switching his paper bag of groceries to his good arm, Bucky waves at Rudy as he walks up to the paper stand. Rudy had taken over hawking papers, and Bucky had to admit he was proud of him. He was doing great. 

“Hey Rudy, any big headlines today?” Bucky sets his bag down at his feet, his smile dropping off his face when he notices Rudy’s expression. The boy holds a paper out wordlessly to him, and Bucky feels the world tilt sideways and threaten to slide away beneath him as he reads the headline. 

_“CAPTAIN AMERICA LOST IN ARCTIC”_

Bucky can’t breathe, his heart is in his throat and he’s gripping the paper hard enough to turn his knuckles white. It can’t be. 

“Hey Bucky, you okay?” Rudy’s voice breaks through his tunnel of panic and Bucky shakes himself hard. No, he’s not okay. Steve- 

“Sorry, I- I have to go.” Bucky digs in his pockets for change to pay for the paper, snatching up his bag of groceries and hurrying down the street towards home. He can’t do this. They had to be wrong. He dumps his groceries onto the table, hopping onto the couch and spreading the paper out on his lap to read. The article is short on details, and Bucky can’t make it more than a few paragraphs before the words start to blur. He presses his knuckles into his eyes, but not before a sob leakes out of him. He can’t do this without Steve. His heart feels like it’s breaking more with every beat, and his throat is so tight he can’t swallow. Another wretched sound bursts out of him and he crumples, burying his face in his hands to cry. 

Steve is gone. This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

At some point Sarah and Winnie show up to collect him, coaxing him off the couch. Bucky feels numb, too tired from crying to argue as they lead him the few blocks to their ma’s. She feeds him, everyone at the table silent as Bucky mechanically spoons soup into his mouth. This feels worse than the shell-shock. He’d take the hollowness over this. He drifts for a while, mind blissfully empty, like he’d really checked out from everything. What did it matter if he had? He can see that Sarah has been crying too, and he knows that if he looks, everyone’s eyes will be puffy. He isn’t the only one that cared about Steve. And now they can’t even give him a burial. 

Bucky’s listeless drifting sustains him for a few weeks. He stays home, spends a lot of time simply staring at the wall. He’d thought that he felt directionless before, but now… He doesn’t want to hear people talk about Captain America. He can’t even turn on the radio, just the thought of people mourning Steve, like they knew him at all, makes him feel sick. He keeps sketching, his hand still shakes at the worst times, but he’s definitely improving. 

He can tell that his ma and his sisters are worried about him. Almost every day one of the girls comes to check on him, and he tries to be a gracious host. He knows they mean well. 

All he has left of Steve is his memories of him. Not even a picture of them together. He calls in a few favors, to Stark, and even some of the local boys he’d known before shipping out. Anyone that owes him. He’s not going to let the world steamroll over his memories of Steve with it’s shiny American icon. He scrapes some money together and blows it all on art supplies at the art store in Brooklyn Heights. His arms are burning by the time that he gets home, and he dumps it all out on the floor of his room to look through everything. A set of paints, a large handful of brushes, and as much art board as he could carry. Pencil sketches just won’t do anymore. He’s going to do it right. Getting better is the one thing he can do for himself. He’d made Steve promise to take care of himself that night at the Expo. What kind of hypocrite would he be if he can’t do the same for himself. Maybe spite isn’t the best thing to build himself up with, but it’s all that he had right now. If correcting the memory of Captain America keeps him going, then so be it. 

Almost by accident he manages to find himself a job. Naturally, as soon as he stops looking, one practically lands in his lap. The daughter of the man who runs the art shop he now frequents remembers him from homeroom - remembers he’s good with numbers, and asks if he can help her friend’s son with his arithmetic. It isn’t long before he has a few classier Brooklyn Heights ladies with his name on retainer for their children or cousins. It doesn’t hurt his case that he hasn’t completely forgotten how to be charming when the occasion calls for it, though he is out of practice. Casual flirtation tastes like sawdust now. At least the job pays well; he guesses the wealthy were still rich, even with a war on. 

He spends any of his time when not at work or with his family elbow deep in his art. Steve’s drafting desk is now always full of sketches, and often Bucky stays up until his eyes burn with exhaustion until he can get everything out. His forms are improving, but he’s still not to where he wants to be - there’s no life in his work. It mocks him from its strange flat plane. He remembers the way that Steve could coax light and depth into his shading, forms curling and deepening even on a scrap of newsprint. He should have paid more attention in their classes. It’s easier to think about art than about Steve or Europe, or the state of the people he passes on the street. But they - all of them- creep into his art unbidden. He throws away the dark scenes of the blurry shapes of men huddling in trenches, or the unnatural glow of cold blue light that still makes him shiver and his arm ache. 

Each day his arm shakes a little less, his deftness with his pencils improving even if it seems like he takes one step forward and three steps back. It’s likely that his arm will never be normal again - they had destroyed it with their tests, and he was lucky they hadn’t simply removed it. Every so often he wakes up clutching it, scratching at his skin trying to remove the needles and metal plates they had employed in their experiments. The doctors had said they were trying to understand how his neural system controlled his arm, and if it could be rerouted to control something else. He had been grateful Steve had gotten him out of there before they could do whatever they had been leading up to. The thought still makes him feel queasy. 

In early May Bucky makes the trip uptown to the Met. The subway no longer unnerves him, and he’s settling into the city again, as much as he feels he’ll ever be able to. It’s still strange to walk alone, hands shoved deep in his pockets with no one to sling his arm around and jostle as they joke together. But that hadn’t happened for years now. There’s a knife that he keeps at the small of his back, under his button-up shirts, a habit he still can’t shake. He hopes he never has to use it. 

It’s actually sunny for once when Bucky gets to Central Park, and he spends a little time just enjoying people-watching and being outside in relatively fresh air. He’d dressed up nicely today, even done up his hair, which he had been lax about when most of his afternoons were spent inside covered in charcoal. He had a bag slung over his shoulder filled with art supplies, and as much paper as he could get shoved in there. During their art courses, he and Steve had been required to go to a few museums to do studies. The fact that he’d completely forgotten that probably means something, but not anything he wants to look too deeply into. He’d been focused on other things. The Met itself is gorgeous, almost overwhelming with everything there is to see. He spends the entire afternoon there, too absorbed in the art to even take out his pencil. There’s an exhibition of William Sidney Mount paintings at the end hall that really catches his attention. He finds an unoccupied bench, and sits there for several hours, taking in every detail, and trying to work out just how genre paintings worked.  
He comes back the next day, and the next, and the next, slowly filling up all his available paper with sketches of the paintings, practice of shadows and light, even hastily scribbled figures as they breeze past him in Central Park. 

Early in the morning, as he makes his now-usual trek through the Park, he hears what sounds like cheering. There’s a crowd gathered in front of the newsstand on the corner, people are jumping and hugging each other, there’s even a woman who seems to be crying. Bucky jogs over to them, concern written on his face. He slows when he gets close enough to actually read the headlines plastered on the front of the newspapers. Words he thought he might never see. 

_“THE WAR IN EUROPE IS ENDED! SUDDENDER IS UNCONDITIONAL; V-E WILL BE PROCLAIMED TODAY; OUR TROOPS ON OKINAWA GAIN”_

Bucky feels the excitement of the people around him, but more distantly. The war is actually over, he honestly didn’t think that it would really happen - it seemed like it would just be one of those things that went on forever. But...Steve was still gone. Shaking himself, he grinned at the woman beside him, accepting a pat on the back from a man as he turned to go to the museum. Things would hopefully get easier for everyone, but they wouldn’t change too much for him. Maybe some of the Howlies would stop and see him on their way home, whenever the government got their shit together. Extradition would likely be slow and a long time coming for some of the guys in the thick of it. 

Bucky doesn’t feel like going to the museum anymore, so he turns to head home, sharing smiles with the people out celebrating in the streets. Today was a good day, finally. 

It takes him a long time to get back down to his neighbourhood. Everyone is congratulating everyone, and there seems to be a makeshift parade forming in some of the streets - he gets celebratory pastries from the baker a few blocks down, and pulled into no less than three different bars to toast America winning the war. He isn’t going to pass up a free drink, even if it seems that alcohol doesn’t do much for him anymore. By the time he gets to his street, he’s feeling in far better spirits than he has in a long time, a real smile on his face. Things are certainly going to be interesting now. He considers going home, but then detours to go and see his family. They’ll want to know, if they don’t already. 

Bucky rushes up the steps of the brownstone, turning the corner to grab Winnie as she squeals in excitement at seeing him. 

“Bucky! Did you hear? The war’s over!” She clings to him, a bit too big for him to hold now, but wrapping her legs around him and letting him heave her over his shoulder to ride around on his back instead. 

“Yeah, I heard.” Bucky kisses his ma on the cheek as he breezes past her. “I brought us some good bread for dinner. Figured this was something we should celebrate. Where’s Becca?” 

Sarah poked her head out from the dining room. “Becca’s out with Charlie. She said not to wait up for her.” She flopped dramatically onto the couch, ignoring the evil eye from their ma at not sitting properly, “They let us out of school early on account ‘a the news.” 

Winnie slid down off Bucky’s back and he dug into his bag to give his ma the loaf of bread. 

Becca didn’t show up the whole time they spent cooking, or through the time that Bucky and Sarah set the table, or when they all sat down, eyeing the empty seat. Bucky was the first to hear the footsteps on the stairs, turning sharply just as Becca burst in with her arm linked with Charlie’s. 

“Sorry I’m late, Ma.” She was out of breath, and both of them looked flushed, “We have some news.” Becca turned to Charlie, looking like he hung the moon. Bucky knew that feeling. 

Charlie looked suddenly stricken, but took a breath and steeled himself. “I’ve asked Becca to marry me. She said yes.” 

The reactions around the table were mixed. Ma stood up and bustled around the table to hug her daughter tightly. Winnie leapt up too, practically bouncing next to Charlie as she started to grill him for the details of their engagement. Sarah looked a little bored, more interested in her food than anything, but she did pipe up with a “ ‘grats Becca.” 

Bucky stands as well, putting his arm around over-excited Winnie and holding out his hand to shake with Charlie. It comes to mind that he’s never even met the man before, only heard Becca talk about him. There’s something soft about him, though it’s clear that he’s tried to hide it by cleaning himself up well. It’s obvious that he thinks Becca’s hung the moon just as much as she thinks it of him. His glasses make his eyes seem almost comically large. 

With their congratulations out of the way they quickly make room for another at the table, all scooting in a little closer. There’s a general good-will suffusing the room and Bucky lets himself drift on it, finding his smile easily for once and joining in on ribbing the to-be-wed couple. Things are really looking up. 

It’s past dark when Bucky goes home, with one last hug for Becca and a slap on the back for Charlie, and he feels a little drunk, despite not having had a drink since this afternoon. Things would be perfect, if only Steve were here. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets as he walks, belatedly wishing he’d brought his coat, as his bookbag of art supplies continuously tries to slip off his shoulders. He’d been eating normally, as normally as anyone could with rations, but he’d still lost weight. Maybe he hasn’t been taking as good of care of himself as he should.

There’s a letter on his stoop. He has to step over it and heave the bag of art supplies onto the table before going back to retrieve it. His heart skips a beat when he sees the familiar handwriting. 

_Hey Buck,_  
Not dead. Home soon. Don’t be too mad.  
Steve 

Bucky stares at the words, his brain slow to comprehend them. Is this some sort of joke? But no, that’s certainly Steve’s handwriting. He lay in bed, head spinning. Honestly, what the fuck… 

 

 

The next morning dawns and he’s barely gotten any sleep. He feels antsy and off-kilter. Steve’s alive? And would be home soon? How soon? Surely not today. Oh god what if it’s today? He feels a bit sick with equal parts worry and excitement. The newspaper had been very clear that Steve had put a plane down in the arctic. How in the hell had he survived that? And why has it taken so long for Bucky to hear anything? 

Afternoon finds him angrily cleaning their apartment for lack of anything better to do. He’ll wring Steve’s neck for letting him think he was dead. The thought of sitting around the house and waiting for Steve to come home makes his skin itch. That’s what he _wants_ to do, but he just can’t bring himself to do it. He’d go stir-crazy. 

The following day he forces himself to go out, briefly wondering if he should go and see his family. What would he tell them? He ends up dragging himself uptown to the MOMA this time, spending most of the day going between the two art museums, and stopping at places in the park to doodle plants, or the people walking past him. There’s a decidedly different feeling in the air, like everyone had let out the breath they had been holding because of the war. Bucky tries to be caught up in it again, like he’d been that first night, but he’s too turned around in his own head. Steve was coming home -- soon. 

The third day he makes some calls to his tutoring students, only for every one of them to tell him that they don’t need him this week. Great, fine, celebrate like everyone else. Yes ma’am, thank you ma’am. Another day of nerves and boredom in equal measure. 

By the end of the week he’s trying not to climb the walls, anxiety and worry and misplaced grief all curled up inside him and making him twitch. He has to find something to do. Maybe finding something to hit would make him feel better. That’s what Steve always did, right? 

Bucky is exhausted, practically wobbling on his feet, his bad arm aching. He hadn’t done any boxing since before he’d shipped out, and clearly he’d forgotten how exhausting it was. It had cleared his head some, let him fall into a rhythm without having to think - and he’d gotten to take a nice hot shower at the facilities. Now he’s just tired, hair damp and trying to hang into his eyes. His bag makes a resounding thump as he drops it on the floor, pulling the door closed behind him and kicking off his shoes. Picking up can wait for the morning. With bleary eyes he pushes open the door to his room, only to freeze when he sees someone standing there, thumbing through the pile of sketches he had left on the bedside table the night before. 

“Steve…” It barely leaves Bucky’s lips at all, more an exhalation of breath that curls against his mouth. Steve. Steve is here. 

Steve turns slowly, setting down the pile of papers, his impossibly broad shoulders framed by the streetlights’ yellow light through the curtains.

Bucky is rooted to the spot, like if he moves, or blinks too many times, Steve might disappear again. 

“Hey Buck.” Steve takes a step toward him and Bucky comes unfrozen, throwing himself into Steve’s arms and mashing their lips together. Steve is here. He’s real. 

Steve nearly squishes the air out of him, gathering Bucky up in his arms and pulling away only far enough to nuzzle at his neck. Bucky clings to him, wrapping his legs around Steve’s impossibly tiny waist and reeling back enough to get a look at him. 

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Bucky says.

Steve looks affronted, but he can’t do much more still holding Bucky up. “I sent you a letter. What more do you want from me?” 

“You let me think you were dead!” Bucky gives Steve’s shoulder a shove, and Steve loosens his grip on Bucky’s ass, letting Bucky slither down off of him. “For weeks!” 

Steve crosses his arms over his frankly ridiculously broad chest. Gosh, Bucky had almost forgotten just how big Steve is now. He looks completely out of place in their tiny cold-water apartment. Steve-from-before wouldn’t have even fit in his own shadow now, and Bucky finds himself struck dumb for a moment, just like the first time he’s seen Steve in Austria. 

“Buck? You there?” Steve’s voice has gone soft, and Bucky realizes he had likely been talking the entire time that Bucky has zoned out. 

“Shit, yeah, sorry. What?” 

“You were mad at me?” Steve’s grinning and Bucky can’t if he wants to hit him or kiss him again, but Steve continues, “To be fair, I thought you were dead when I took that stroll to Austria.” 

Bucky grumbles, but has to concede the point. He had also thought he was dead in Austria, but he doesn’t need to tell Steve that. “Call it square?” 

“Deal.” Steve gently tips his head back to kiss him again and Bucky melts. Damn you, Rogers. 

When Bucky can pull himself away from Steve’s sinfully soft lips and wandering hands, he takes Steve’s head in his hands, brushing his thumbs over his cheeks. “Tell me what happened.” 

By the time Steve is through explaining what had happened with the Valkyrie, Bucky is back to being furious, pacing the room and gesturing wildly at Steve while making frustrated noises. He doesn’t even know where to start! Lord save him from the stubborn and idiotic antics of Steve Rogers! 

“You’re honestly too stubborn to die, is what you’re telling me. I’m going to go gray by thirty if you keep this up,” Bucky exclaims, stopping to stand in front of Steve, who had taken a seat on the bed. It looked like it was going to give out under his bulk. 

Steve holds his gaze. He’s got his “stubborn righteousness” face on, jaw pushed out and shoulders squared. “I had to do what was needed. It ended the war, didn’t it? No one else could have done it.” 

He’s right, of course he’s right. Steve’s always right, and it makes Bucky want to scream. “So if they decide they need you to do something stupid again in a few weeks?” Bucky knows the answer. Steve would go. He’d go and fight the good fight until the fight was done. But the fight would never _be_ done. It would only be done when Steve couldn’t fight anymore, when Bucky really loses him. 

“I can’t just do nothing. I’m home for a few days, but they’ll surely need me to help with demobilization efforts.” 

Bucky drags his hands over his face, taking a deep breath to get himself together. This is going to be his life now, isn’t? Steve’s going to leave, to do whatever crazy thing they asked of him, and Bucky’s going to be stuck worrying himself to death every time. 

Steve stands, catching Bucky’s hands in his own and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “I might be ‘too stubborn to die’ according to you, but I’ll always come back to you, Buck. You know that, don’t you?” 

“When have I ever not worried about you?” Bucky kisses him again. This is going to be their new fight. They’ve always had one, after all. Steve’s always going to push himself too far, and Bucky’s going to hide his worries until he lashes out. It’s the same song and dance. Better to just enjoy the few days that Steve will be here. 

Steve gathers him back into his arms. “Why don’t you let me take you to bed? Forget your worries for a few minutes.” 

Bucky snorts out a laugh, draping his arms around Steve’s neck. “Always the charmer. Better be more than a few minutes.” 

 

 

They break the bed. Bucky wishes that he could make this shit up, but his life is honestly like that now. Once Steve picks himself up out of the remains of the bedframe, after laughing himself red in the face, Bucky can’t even find it in himself to be upset. He’s just glad his best guy is back- even if he’s now as big of an idiot on the outside as the inside. 

Steve pulls on the pants he’d come home in, and helps Bucky put their room back together. They’re going to have have to get Steve some clothes that actually fit, maybe have a tailoring day after. The odds of anything from Macy’s fitting Steve’s newly-ridiculous proportions are slim to none. It doesn’t stop Bucky from admiring the ripple of Steve’s muscles as he bends to gather up Bucky’s sketches that have been scattered all over the floor. 

“Wow Buck, you’ve gotten really good.” Steve flips through the pages as he settles onto their lumpy couch, which squeals in protest. They’re going to have to get Steve-resistant furniture. 

Bucky squeezes himself in next to Steve on the couch, peering over his shoulder. “It’s alright. I haven’t had a lot to do. Drawing’s been helping my arm.” 

“You make all your men so pretty,” Steve remarks, turning to grin at Bucky when he smacks Steve’s shoulder. 

“Shut your mouth. I’ll draw them with big dumb faces like yours.” Bucky pushes himself up, going to poke around the kitchen and see if they have anything to eat. It’s so late that it’s early again, the sun is staining the sky behind the buildings a rosy pink and orange, but Bucky’s exhaustion is completely forgotten. 

“I don’t mind modeling for you.” Steve sets the sketches on the drafting table. “It’s always good to work from life.” 

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him and his overly-earnest face. His guy was impossible. “Fine. I’ll sketch you before you leave. But we need a new bed, and some clothes for you, and we need to go and tell everyone you’re not actually dead. But first, I’m going to guess you’re starved.” 

The rumble of Steve’s stomach answers for him.

Bucky fills Steve in on what he’s been doing while Steve demolishes a pile of hash that’s more potato than anything: his art, his tutoring jobs and the best and worst stories of the kids he now deals with, his ma and his sisters, Becca’s engagement, all of it. Steve listens with rapt attention, and Bucky finds himself relaxing in a way he hasn’t been able to since before he’d shipped out. Steve’s here, they’re both home, not the same but still together. 

It isn’t much longer before Bucky starts to yawn for real, his dismissed exhaustion bearing down on him full-force now. Steve pulls the mattress off their mangled bed frame and into the main room. No matter how close together they squish there is just no way they’re going to fit on that single mattress, so Bucky curls up on the couch, smiling softly down at Steve as he tries to fit his whole self under a blanket. Poor guy. Eventually Bucky falls asleep with his hand in Steve’s, not even caring about the fact that his back will likely have a horrible crick when he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of my research links for your perusal: 
> 
> Bucky was away from June 14th 1943 (when he and Steve go to the Stark Expo) and he gets back in February of 1945. [ TFA Timeline](https://usavatar.dreamwidth.org/4660.html)  
> Censure of letters post-war: [ Office of Censorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship) closed in November 1945  
> [ V-Mail](https://postalmuseum.si.edu/victorymail/using/index.html)  
> Combat Fatigue: post-war most soldiers wanted to return to their normal lives, but encouraging women to join the workforce meant there were few jobs for them, a lot of men turned to drinking [ more info](https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-WWII-soldiers-to-return-home-after-the-war-ended)  
> GI bills were passed, like [ this one](https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/gi-bill) that provided financial support + tuition support for those attending school.  
> The [ Captain America Adventure Program](http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/The_Captain_America_Adventure_Program) is from Agent Carter but I just had to include it.
> 
>  
> 
> What do you think so far? Did you find the research interesting?  
> Drop me a comment below or message me on my [ tumblr! ](http://cryo-bucky.tumblr.com)


	2. Steve gets home (and goes away again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks to everyone for all your help! Here we go section 2!  
> If you enjoy the art feel free to go and send [ Helene](https://misspaperjoker.tumblr.com) nice messages on her tumblr! She's a joy and this fic wouldn't have happened without her!

[](http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180618/ehrrhef3.jpg)  


Bucky is right about the crick in his back. He can barely move his legs when he gets up to pee, and wobbles dangerously until Steve sits up to grab him. Steve has tossed and turned all night, woken Bucky up a few times murmuring apologies after he’d kicked the sofa hard enough to shift it across the floor. It’s obvious what he’s going through, hell, Bucky is still going through it himself. It’s hard, almost impossible, to re-adjust to normal life after the war. Part of Bucky knows that they are irreparably changed by it. A man doesn’t see those kinds of things and come out with the same naiveté. The loss of the fiercely idealistic string bean of a guy,who had caused so much strife since he was young, stung sharply in Bucky’s chest. But he loved this Steve just as fiercely. He wasn’t the same either, so why expect Steve to get through the other side without some haunted memories. 

After a cold scrub-down in the tub at the end of the hall, Bucky ambles back into their apartment to see Steve hunched over the stove poking at more potato hash. They’d have to get some food today too. Maybe being Captain America entitled you to a ham, or two loaves of bread instead of one. 

Steve gets weird when Bucky puts on his shoes to go out, wringing his hands and looking like a nervous, overgrown, terrier. Bucky looks up at him from his place on the chair by the door, resting his elbow on his knee as Steve fidgets in place. 

“What’s up Steve?” 

“Do you think people will recognize me?” 

Bucky blinks at him, sitting up straight. “When I told Becca you were Captain America she laughed in my face. Laughed until she was wheezing. The public has never seen you without your hat-”

“It’s a helmet!” Steve interjects, anxiety replaced by annoyance. 

“Regardless.” Bucky continues, “People don’t know you. It’ll be fine. If anything they’ll side-eye me for walking around with a living David.” 

“Buck…” Ah, there it is, the embarrassment. Steve is just so damn cute, and Bucky can’t help but tease him. He was the one that went and got himself beefed up to punch Nazis. They deserved to be punched - Bucky would have punched them himself given the chance, but that isn’t really the point. 

Apparently Steve’s panic is abated, because they get out onto the street without any problems. Bucky resists the familiar urge to throw his arm around Steve’s shoulder, taking a moment to nudge him when Steve’s posture gets too tight. It’s odd to see Steve look so uncomfortable, but Bucky knows exactly what he’s going through. He’d help as much as he could. 

Steve does a good job of smoothing over his anxiety as they walk, and Bucky has to hurry a bit to keep up with him. Ordinary-Bucky would have put up more of a fight about Steve carrying all their purchases, but his back is still stiff and his arm is acting up something fierce, nerves tingling up and down and criss-crossing in a way that makes him suck his teeth in annoyance. But they are not coming home without a bed on order. Hopefully. 

Bucky needs a break by the afternoon. They’ve gotten Steve some clothes that can be altered to actually fit him, and some food for their icebox, as well as putting a bed on order. It will take a while to get here, and they’ll have to pick it up when it does. Steve hadn’t let Bucky see the price that the salesman wrote on his receipt, and Bucky’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know. Apparently being Captain America doesn’t pay too badly, though they’d both cringed at the prices of Steve’s shirts. 

“You think we can write your clothes off as a tax deduction?” Bucky takes a Coke from Steve as Steve shoves food into their icebox. “Government-related spending.” 

“Very funny, Bucky. Maybe I’ll make you pay for our bed.” 

That gets Bucky sitting up again. “I’d rather sleep on the floor than this couch again.” 

They rib each other through their quick respite, just long enough for Bucky to catch his breath before they’re off again. Bucky might be used to walking, but he’s never going to be able to keep up with Steve long-term. The nerves Steve had expressed this morning return full-force as they approach Bucky’s family’s home. 

“You can punch a tank, but you’re scared of my ma?” Bucky nudges him as they turn the corner. Bucky knows the truth of his words as he says them. He’d rather face off with a battalion than deal with what Steve is likely walking into. Steve doesn’t even need to respond, just shoots Bucky a look. 

Bucky gives him a good-natured nudge with his shoulder and Steve manages a smile that’s only a little strained. Much better. 

“Ma! Girls!” Bucky shouts once they get up to the brownstone, waving when he sees Sarah’s familiar face peeking out from the edge of the curtained window. 

Steve squares his shoulders like he’s going into battle as the door flies open and Winnie skids to a stop in front of them.  
_“Steve?”_ She sounds slightly star-struck, and cranes her head to look up at him like he’s one of the Greek sculptures that Bucky’s been hunting down in museums for the last few weeks. 

Sarah doesn’t make it all the way up to them, staring wide-eyed at Steve, and yeah, Bucky knows that feeling. Steve looks even more out of place with his family than he did in their tiny apartment. It’s difficult for a moment for Bucky to keep the world from sliding sideways as his mind tries to reconcile his memories of Steve-from-before with the man next to him. It put him in a new context, that was really just the old context revisited. 

Steve waves at Becca when she joins them, throwing his arms out and letting her hug him. Winnie and Sarah approach Steve more cautiously; Winnie immediately launching into questions. 

“Did it hurt? What they did to make you big?” Winnie grabs Steve’s hand, comparing his palm to the size of hers. Sarah wraps her hands around Steve’s bicep and he obligingly flexes his arm, grinning at her when she gasped. 

“Ma!” Winnie shouts as she turns toward the building, a grin on her face, “Look who Bucky found!” 

Bucky looks up sharply, worry for his ma’s reaction making him sway toward Steve out of long-ingrained protectiveness. Honestly, what is he worried about? His ma loves Steve like one of her own. 

Winifred stands in the doorway for only a moment before she hurries down the steps, giving Steve just enough time to stand to give her a proper hug. Steve hugs her tightly, and boy does she look small next to him. It’s something Bucky is sure he could never reconcile - his  
mother who’d been such a huge figure all of his life, being the same woman who looked so tiny in Steve’s arms. 

When she pulls away, Bucky can tell that there’s wetness in her eyes, but before Steve can even open his mouth, she promptly smacks him upside the head. Instead of recoiling, Steve simply dissolves into laughter. His ma is doing her best to look angry, and only partially succeeding. 

“Steven Grant Rogers, you are in fact the world's largest idiot! You let us worry about you for almost two years! And Bucky has to come back and tell us that you’d gone and signed yourself up to be Captain America? Look at you! Then you go and get yourself killed? Be still my heart, I can hardly believe the two of you!” 

“Hey!” Bucky interjects, “What did I do?” He throws his hands up in surrender when his ma fixes him with a glare. 

Things progress pretty normally from there. Bucky shoos them all out of the kitchen to make dinner. He isn’t the kind of man who can’t feed himself; he can make something edible for all of them. Probably. Besides, he’s gotten to talk to Steve already, it’s only fair that his family get their time; they’ve known him just as long as Bucky has. 

Bucky only slightly burns their dinner - “It’s a hash it’s supposed to be brown, Sarah!” - but no one complains. He spends the rest of the evening trying not to look too moony-eyed at Steve sitting beside him. Things are finally going well for once. Steve’s home, he’d finally started to progress at his art, and everything’s going to look up. Hopefully. 

When they say their final goodbyes everyone takes the opportunity to hug Steve again. Bucky does his best to look like he understands a single thing Becca is telling them about her wedding plans - really, he hardly knows the difference between a rose and a carnation, sorry Becs. He almost misses seeing his ma leaning up to whisper in Steve’s ear, and the tiny smile and nod he gives her in return. Give it to his mother to be scheming. He can ask Steve about it later. Before they make it farther than a dozen steps down the sidewalk, Sarah comes barreling towards them and and launches herself at Steve, who catches her more out of reflex than anything, laughing with his whole body as she clambours up onto his shoulders. Winnie isn’t far behind, giggling gleefully as Steve lifts her easily with one arm, nudging Sarah over until he’s got one of them in each arm, holding them like they weigh nothing. 

“We’re glad you’re alright Steve.” Sarah whispers, letting Steve put her down after a moment. 

“He’s more than alright!” Winnie clings to Steve’s arm when she slides down, hanging off him like he’s a human jungle gym, kicking her feet and swinging a little before dropping to the ground, “He’s Captain America!” 

Bucky sees the change that comes over Steve, how his soft smile goes a little strained. There it was, the elephant in the room, and for a breath Bucky finds himself hating Captain America. Hating everything the government has done to strip away and steamroll over his best friend. 

“Hey, let’s go home Steve.” Bucky throws his arm around Steve’s shoulders, a little awkwardly now that Steve’s so much broader, “Go home girls. We’ll be back soon.” 

Bucky watches the girls scamper back to the building, enjoying the moment when Steve can lean against him in the evening light. He looks tired, and Bucky empathises. He’s felt tired since his first day in Europe, will probably feel tired until they put him in his grave. 

 

 

Their bed takes nearly a week to arrive, and Bucky has never been so happy to see a delivery truck in his life. Steve thanks the movers after they have to double-park to get the mattress out of the back, trying to be as subtle as he can about picking up the box of bed parts and the mattress under each arm. Bucky quickly intercedes, handing them a check with Steve’s signature and a generous tip that he’d dug out of his change jar. He isn’t too proud to accept Steve taking care of him just a little. It feels kind of nice, especially thinking back to the struggles that they’d endured. They deserve at least one nice thing, don’t they? 

Bucky spends the next forty-five minutes flopped face-first onto the new mattress that Steve’s left on the living room floor, periodically turning and wiggling, only to groan in pleasure. It is by far the most comfortable thing he’s ever lain on. Steve alternates between cursing at the plans for the bedframe and eyeing Bucky. Bucky just grins at him and Steve blows him a kiss as he tightens the bolts on the headboard. 

Once they get the mattress heaved up on the frame and the sheets tucked neatly in, Bucky makes a beeline for his pencils and Steve goes to take a shower to get off the dust and sweat of moving furniture. Steve sits on the edge of the bed when he gets back, hair still slightly damp and his head tilted in confusion, squinting at him when Bucky drags one of their chairs into the bedroom to sit on.  
“Okay, what?” Steve looks him up and down as Bucky curls up in the chair.

Bucky looks through his pencils after he grabs his newest sketch pad from the bedside table. “You said I could sketch you before you leave. Why not now?” 

The surprise on Steve’s face makes it clear that Bucky sketching him is _not_ what Steve had in mind for the first use of their new bed, but Bucky just waves his pencil at him. 

“We can christen the bed after. I want to make use of this nice light.” 

Steve is already stripping off his undershirt over his head, giving Bucky a crooked smile. “Stop the presses, it’s the first time in history that Bucky Barnes turns down sex.” 

Brandishing his pencil at Steve, Bucky tries not to get drawn in by the copious amounts of soft skin that Steve is revealing as he wiggles out of his pants and sprawls out on the sheets. 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph this bed is comfortable.” Steve takes a long moment to just lie like a big starfish, just the same way that Bucky had done in the living room. 

Bucky settles more comfortably in his chair, making broad marks to lay out a few strokes of Steve’s form, warming up his arm before he commits to anything. 

“You want me to move?” Steve rumbles, quirking open an eye and turning his head to look at Bucky. 

“Sure -” Bucky watches Steve shift and arrange himself against the headboard, languid as he sprawls over the pillows. Bucky feels his mouth go dry. That bastard knows exactly what he’s doing. 

“Well?” Steve’s grinning. “This okay?” 

“It’d be better if you were naked.” Bucky offers, eyes rounding when Steve shifts to slide his pants off. 

There hadn’t been a whole lot of time while they were running around Europe to admire just how amazing Steve’s new body is, but now seeing it spread out on display... Steve is gorgeous, had always been gorgeous even when he was thin skin stretched over bird bones. Now though, he’s radiant in the low light of the early evening, the sun turning him into a golden-bronze deity that leaves Bucky starstruck.  
Steve waits patiently for Bucky to start sketching, but Bucky’s mesmerised by the planes and valleys of his torso, gaze creeping up over the hills of his pecs -- high and tight, and god Bucky wants to put his mouth on his perky nipples -- up the arch of his throat to see the smirk that curved Steve’s impossibly soft lips. 

Bucky gives a valiant effort to sketching, tries to focus on the curve of Steve’s shoulders and the way the light plays over his hip bones.  
Even the soft swell of his cock between his legs, nestled in its nest of hair. He licks his lips as he eyes the angle of Steve’s jaw, imagining  
sucking a mark into his throat. 

Steve obediently lies still until Bucky fills a few pages with him, shifting when asked, and keeping the soft smile on his lips. Bucky wants to taste it, and he says so, grinning himself when Steve’s eyes widen a little. 

Now Bucky can’t stop talking. Tells Steve how gorgeous he is, how much he’s missed him, all the things that he’s thought about doing since Steve went away and how lonely that big bed has been. Steve is squirming for real by the time Bucky stops talking. 

“Would you put down the damn pencil and get over here?” Steve is reaching out and Bucky can’t possibly deny him. 

Steve’s lips taste like peppermint. Bucky thinks he would have hated peppermint after all those lozenges he had to suck to get the taste of his asthma cigarettes out of his mouth, but it makes him melt. He’s so glad that Steve is here with him. 

Steve seems perfectly happy under him as Bucky crawls onto his chest, grabbing onto Bucky’s ass as Bucky gets a handful of his pecs. They both gasp when Bucky ruts his hips down, Steve gasping into his mouth. 

Bucky sits up long enough to pull his shirt off and shimmy his pants down his hips. Steve mostly gets in the way, but tries his best to help, sucking marks against Bucky’s collar bones and making soft noises that drive Bucky crazy with want. 

As soon as his hands are free again, Bucky pushes Steve down into the mattress. 

“You gonna let me fuck you, Stevie?” Bucky murmurs, watching Steve’s eyes darken. Yeah, he was gonna. “You sneaky bastard, you got yourself all clean during your shower, didn’t you?” 

“Get the slick, will ya?” Steve’s Brooklyn drawl seems to have returned full force, and Bucky feels his cock twitch. He hasn’t even realized how much he’s missed Steve’s familiar lack of consonants. It has him scrambling off Steve in search of the Vaseline. 

By the time he pops back up from digging in the drawer, Steve is eyeing him like his favorite treat, stroking himself lazily and giving Bucky that lopsided grin that makes his heart skip in his chest. Bucky really is the luckiest guy in the whole world. 

Bucky can’t help but kiss him as he climbs back into bed, popping the lid off the Vaseline and grinning widely when Steve digs his fingers into Bucky’s hips. Clearly they’re both eager. 

Steve makes a desperate noise as Bucky pushes his legs further open, and Bucky watches the flush crawl all the way down Steve’s neck to his nipples. He always blushes all over, his Stevie. 

“Want you like this.” Steve shifts to make room for Bucky between his legs, staring down at him as Bucky presses kisses into the jut of his hips. “Want to look at you.” 

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”  
Bucky takes a moment to suck Steve’s pretty cock into his mouth, grinning at the shocked noise that Steve lets out. Steve is extra-sensitive all over now. It’s easy to work him up. They’d discovered early on that Steve could basically stay hard forever -- they’d eventually given up after wringing nearly a half-dozen orgasms from him, Steve too tired to keep going but still hard as ever. It had been fun. They should do that again soon. 

Now though, Bucky has other things to focus on, like the revenant way that Steve whispers his name and cradles the back of his head, or the way he hisses out a moan as Bucky starts to stretch him open. 

If Bucky had thought Steve was beautiful before, now he’s radiant, flushed pink across his chest, pupils blown, and eternally sinful lips kissed plump and soft. He looks at Bucky with so much love as Bucky slicks them both up liberally, pressing soft but urgent kisses to Bucky’s lips. Steve buries his face into his own arm to muffle a moan as Bucky manhandles him, pushes his legs higher to nudge his cock into his now-wet hole. 

They both gasp for a few long moments before Bucky bottoms out. 

“Guh- you’ve always been a tight-ass.” Bucky grins against Steve’s skin and pushes himself forward until he can’t go any further, relishing in the sweet swell of Steve’s ass against his hips. 

Steve opens his mouth to reply but Bucky pulls back and snaps his hips forward with enough force to push another moan out of Steve, and they’re both quick to cover Steve’s mouth. Can’t be too loud, don’t want the whole neighborhood to know what they’re up to. 

This new bed doesn’t even squeak, and Bucky is blissfully glad of it as he hikes Steve’s legs up around his ears, folding Steve nearly in half to get the angle just right to make him whimper. 

Steve’s blunt nails dig into Bucky’s shoulders, and Bucky can’t help but pull him as close as possible, rolling his hips in smooth circles that make Steve bite his lips in an effort to keep quiet. There’s no way Bucky is going to last like this, so he quickly pulls out all the stops, ducking his head to suck one of Steve’s nipples into his mouth, and switching to sharper and quicker jabs of his hips. Steve chokes on a breath, biting back a yelp when Bucky gets his angle just right. 

“There you go.” Bucky pauses and murmurs into his ear, “You tighten up so much when I get you just right.” 

“Buck-” Steve gasps chest heaving. “S’good…”

He doesn’t need to say any more, eyes fluttering. Bucky doesn’t top as often as Steve, but Steve is just as enthusiastic about bottoming as he is anywhere else. Bucky will never tire of watching Steve’s eyes roll back with pleasure. 

“You close?” Bucky grates out, trying to think of anything but just how close _he_ is. Fuck, it’s almost too much, “Wanna see it.” 

Steve just makes a helpless noise, and Bucky sits back, hooking Steve’s legs up again to really give it to him. 

Steve gasps sharply, biting his bottom lip hard enough Bucky’s worried he might draw blood. Before he can say anything, Steve is coming, not even needing a hand on him, as he paints his stomach with thick white lines. 

It’s too much, too much to see Steve look so fucked-out and satisfied as he shakes through his orgasm, and after only a couple more thrusts Bucky follows him over that edge. By the time that he’s caught his breath enough to press their lips together, Steve has started to pet at his sides, ever clingy afterwards. Bucky can never get enough. 

“Love you…” Steve murmurs against his lips. 

“Love you too.” Bucky rolls off him, wincing at the uncomfortable sticky feeling clinging to his skin, “This is a great bed.”  
Once they’ve both taken time to recover, and Steve has gotten them a washcloth to clean up with, Bucky lazes across Steve’s chest, sighing happily and nosing into the hollow of his throat. “You make a pretty good pillow now.”  
Steve doesn’t reply and Bucky peels one of his eyes open to look up at him. Steve has gathered up all Bucky’s sketches, carefully smoothing out any wrinkles and flipping through them with a thoughtful expression. 

“These are great, Buck.” Steve says, eyes tracing the curve of his own back on the page. “You ever think of trying to make a job for yourself out of this? I think people would love it.” 

Propping himself up on his elbow, Bucky frowns at him. “I never thought about it,” It seems so far-off. There’s no way that his sketches are really that good; Steve’s just biased. “Illustration for a magazine cover or something, that’d be slick. But you have to be a real fancy high-brow guy for that.” 

After he carefully sets the sketches safely back on the nightstand Steve throws his arm around Bucky and pulls him into a kiss. Bucky lets himself relax into him, tracing his thumb over Steve’s jaw. His cock gives a valiant twitch when Steve sighs happily against his lips, but there is no round two in either of them right now. A soft noise leaves Bucky’s throat when Steve pulls away, but its only to reorganize them into a more comfortable position. This bed is just too much. Bucky may never move again. 

Steve’s breath tickles the short hairs by Bucky’s ear as he breathes, both of them curled into a warm and cozy cocoon. “Just think about it. I know some people who I can-” 

“No way.” Bucky twists, propping himself up to look down at Steve, who looks shocked at being cut off, “I don’t need you pulling some Captain America strings to get me a job.” 

Steve’s gaze hardens and Bucky can see the argument brewing in his eyes. Before he can open his mouth Bucky flops back down beside him. 

“Can we argue about it in the morning? I’m too tired right now.” Bucky wriggles around until he’s got his back to Steve’s front, and relaxes the tension in his shoulders when Steve eventually curls against him. If Steve isn’t going to push the argument now, then he was probably in for a real earful in the morning, but that’s for Morning Bucky to deal with. For now he’s just going to enjoy snuggling with his best guy. 

Bucky only manages a few hours of sleep before Steve wakes him up, sticking his foot into the small of Bucky’s back and practically launching him off the bed. Bucky is on his feet in a second, rounding on Steve to rip him a new one, only to see that Steve isn’t even awake. He’s curled up into a ball now, blankets held so tightly in his fist that there’s new fingers holes in them. He’s whimpering, and gosh Bucky hasn’t heard him whimper since he was a boy, so sick with fever that he’d been hallucinating. That’s what this is, in a way, Steve is having a nightmare, and it doesn’t take much thinking to know what it’s about . Bucky can still smell the trench mud sometimes, hear the whine of shells over them in the brakes of a car on the street. 

“Steve. Stevie, hey.” Buck cautiously approaches the bed, leery of touching him in case he lashes out again. And it wouldn’t be a black eye or a bruise, it would be a broken arm or a personal meeting with the wall behind him. “Steve, pal, wake up.” Bucky says, a little louder. 

Steve’s eyes snap open, wide and glazed-over with fear. Bucky hasn’t seen him like this. He knows of course -- there had been enough nights where he’d slept with his rifle in his hands and shook his way through the bombardment of memories of wet trenches and HYDRA cages -- but seeing it reflected back from Steve is enough to throw him. 

Bucky puts his hands up, drops his shoulders, tries to make himself approachable, make Steve see him. Steve had been over there longer than him. Hell, Steve had been right in the thick of it, while Bucky had stayed back and watched through his scope. Steve had _died_ for all intents and purposes. 

“Steve. You with me?” Bucky takes another step closer, “You’re home. It’s alright.” Bucky feels sick to his stomach, watching Steve come out of it. This is his best friend, the love of his life, not a frightened and wounded animal. And yet, here they are. Does he himself look any better?

Steve blinked, and suddenly he’s present again, looking lost and a bit confused as he loosens his fingers from the holes he’s made in their sheets. He shrinks into himself, and Bucky crawls back onto the bed, pulling Steve into his arms, where he barely fits now. He doesn’t say anything as Steve mushes his face into his shoulder, just pets his hair and doesn’t comment on the fact that he can feel wetness seeping into his sleeve. It had been months since Bucky had come home, and Steve’s still raw from everything he had experienced, there are bound to be bad nights. 

They drift back off like that, Steve huddled into Bucky’s side, with Bucky’s arm around Steve’s huge shoulders, the blankets tangled between them. It isn’t so different from what they’d had before, but Bucky doesn’t miss that anyway. Maybe he wishes that he could feel the same naive hope, and the full use of his arm would be nice. But truthfully he’s just glad to have Steve with him. 

When Bucky wakes, he’s alone in bed, and he scrubs his hands over his face and scratches at his scalp until his hair is standing on end. He’d always had amazing bed-head. Steve has clearly gotten up before him, and he’s left the door to their bedroom open, warm light spilling in from the windows in the main room and giving him a direct view of the front door.

He spies Steve in front of the mirror on the back of the front door, hunching slightly to look at himself as he shaved, the bowl of shaving foam perched carefully on one of the chairs that he’s clearly dragged over from the kitchen. Bucky can’t help but grin, leaning against the counter and watching Steve work. Teaching Steve to shave had been a bit of an ordeal, not that he’d had much stubble to work with anyway. But it had been important to learn. Now it seems Steve’s beard is simply stubborn. He’d had to shave every morning just to keep the stubble at bay, and it even looks as though his hair is already on the verge of army regulation just from the time it had taken him to come home. 

Steve meets his gaze through the mirror, and Bucky grins at him, pacing across the room to grab his sketch pad, blocking out the line of Steve’s shoulders. 

“Starting early with the art?” Steve pauses in his shaving, straightening and twisting his body to look at Bucky, hand on his hip, razor close to his cheek. Bucky makes a small noise, eyes raking over the angles of Steve’s body. He’s so pretty, and god but Bucky loves him. 

Steve goes back to shaving when Bucky doesn’t reply, but from his angle now from the counter, he can see the curl of a smile on Steve’s lips. He’s glad that Steve seems alright. 

They both know that Steve is going to leave again, it simmers between them unspoken but ever-looming. They cook breakfast together, brushing shoulders all the while. Steve helps Bucky clean up the apartment, even seems happy to do it. Bucky tries to get past the anxiety, but it makes him pushy and clingy, wanting to hoard up all of Steve’s attention while he can, and Steve doesn’t seem to mind too much. He is patient with Bucky when he whines and crawls all over him, and isn’t that crazy?. Bucky can hardly bear the idea of Steve leaving again, his chest aches with it, but who is he to keep Steve here when he’s needed. They both know how that would end up. Steve is far too stubborn for both of their own goods. 

Steve still gets anxious when they go out, worried that someone will recognize him and call for his attention. He’d never been one for the spotlight, which had probably made him completely uncomfortable on that USO tour. Bucky teases him every time he catches a girl eyeing them as they walk down the street. Bucky pretends to be hurt that none of them are looking at him anymore, but really can he blame them? 

If anything, it makes him jealous - makes him want to go so far as to put his hand in Steve’s back pocket, or write his name across his forehead. Steve was, of course, oblivious to the additional attention, chattering away at Bucky as they spend their time out on the fire escape of their building, or shopping at the market, or down by the pier. 

It’s nice - seems everyone is doing their best to forget the war ever happened, like the dark cloud that had lain over them all is finally moving on. Bucky wishes he could feel the same, but he still feels out of place, dysfunctional with his faulty arm. He knows that he makes some of the shopkeepers uncomfortable, despite how hard he tries to be the way that he was before. There’s something wrong with him now, or maybe it had always been there. There had been a reason that the army had picked him out to be a sniper, he could do the math in his head or scribbled in his notebook, had watched the arc of his shot as it took out a target he could barely even see. Is it really natural? 

Or is he irreparably damaged? 

He doesn’t say any of this to Steve of course, it’s his own shit, he didn’t need to heap it onto someone else. Being home is helping, but it’s going to take more than a good meal and a few sketches to wash his hands of all that he’d seen and done. 

The letter for Steve comes at the end of the week, only two weeks after Steve’s first night back. Their time together had been longer than Bucky had expected, but he’d selfishly hoped for more. Steve looks conflicted, but his jaw is set, and Bucky knows that he won’t hesitate to go. 

“I won’t tell you to stay,” he says, watching Steve re-read the letter, “Couldn’t keep you here before, won’t now. Wish you would though.” 

Steve reaches for him and Bucky moves closer to give him a kiss. Before, this might have likely ended up in a fight, but now Bucky’s too tired to argue, and Steve is no less an idiot, but at least a little more resistant to dying. 

“Wish I could go and watch your six. But I have a feeling I’d hold you back.” Bucky tips his cheek into Steve’s palm, relishing in the warmth of his skin. 

Three days later Steve ships back out for Europe, and Bucky has to resist the urge to kiss his stupid face at Municipal Airport. Apparently being Captain America means you got a private flight over the Atlantic.  
The apartment seems cold without Steve — now that Bucky is alone again. There is a knot of worry and anxiety in his stomach that makes him feel queasy, and he curls up in bed later that night still dragging his uncertainty with him.  
Please let Steve be okay. 

[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/kloipcfu.jpg)  


Bucky forces himself to live with some structure. It’s easy to lose himself in the small things without Steve there to drag him out of it. He’d never been like this before, but now if he relaxes his carefully constructed routine, he’ll lay in bed all day and stare at the wall, or get caught in a loop of cleaning the kitchen and be at it for six hours. It feels like a step back, like how he’d been when he’d thought Steve was dead. No, not like that, at least hadn’t had that weight on him. 

He works time into his schedule for art, though not as much as he’d like. The week that Steve leaves, he gets not one but three requests to come back and tutor uptown. Apparently now that the immediate excitement of the end of the war has ebbed, things are back to normal, as much as they can be. It’s nice to have some extra change in his pocket again. 

It seems his entire family is somehow involved in planning Becca’s wedding, and it’s not that Bucky doesn’t care, but he avoids being dragged into it whenever he can. He’s never had an eye for it. He does however pull Charlie aside and offer to help him in any way he can. None of them has a lot of money, but this is his sister, and he wants her wedding to be the best it can be. 

About once a week Bucky will get a letter from Steve. Those are enough to pull him out of even the worst slump. Of course Steve still can’t tell him what he’s been up to, but the censor’s black marker seems more forgiving than it had been. 

 

_Hey Buck,_  
_I wonder if the trenches will ever go back to what they were? There are a lot of people here still, all excited to go home. Don’t know why the army is dragging its feet so much, but there’s still a lot to do. People are still missing, and it seems that there are still people who haven’t given up completely on the war. Don’t know how long I’ll be here, don’t miss me too much.  
Steve _

 

Bucky thinks on Steve’s suggestion to try and find an illustration job. Plenty of new magazines have been cropping up, slowly but surely there seems to be more demand for artists to sell products. He’d never considered trying to make art into any sort of career. But now his arm is-- surprisingly --mostly functional, and what harm could it do sending in a piece? 

The rejection letters don’t upset him. He knows that it’s a long shot to get noticed. 

Once the war office announces that he can start sending longer letters, he takes full advantage, no longer carefully mincing his words to fit them on VE mail. He tells Steve more about what he’s been doing, which isn’t much. He includes small sketches with his letters, the skyline outside their window, people passing by on the street below, the front of the bakery a few blocks back. Steve always fauns over the sketches in his replies, and it makes Bucky miss him fiercely. 

Becca decides to have her wedding in September. Which Bucky thinks is a bad time, but hell, it’s not his wedding. He writes Steve and tells him he has to come, because really, when is the next time either of them is going to get to go to a wedding where they won’t be expected to entertain a date. He hopes that Steve can actually make it, obviously he’s busy saving the world and all. 

Months pass this way. Bucky’s bad days become fewer, but he has to admit that he’s lonely. Every letter from Steve has him hoping that he’ll come back, and disappointed when they all say the same thing: There’s more work to be done. 

Any spare afternoon that Bucky can drag himself out of the house and be bothered to get on the subway, he finds himself at the MET, browsing their exhibitions and trying to find inspiration and ways to improve himself. The attendants have started to recognize him, often coming up to chat with him about the specific paintings. One of them, a nice girl who always wears pink lipstick, suggests he try painting rather than pencils and charcoal. The idea of learning a whole new medium makes him uneasy, but it would be nice to add some color to his pieces… 

Paints are expensive. He spends most of an afternoon talking to the owner of the art shop about the different things he’ll need. He ends up with a few tubes of basic colors and a handful of brushes in various sizes. The owner had said he could make his own canvases if he wished, but he’d gotten a few small boards to practice on in the meantime. 

The transition from graphite to oils is daunting for sure, but he finds painting surprisingly meditative. It’s easy to lose himself in the way that the paints commingled, the contrast of the slightly sticky paint right out of the tube and the smooth _shhhhh_ of the brush across the rough canvas. It’s fun to sketch out a composition on paper and then see it come alive when he works a final iteration on a panel. Soon he’s working around piles of sketches _and_ stacks of panels. In one of his trips to get yet another tube of titanium white, Bucky mentions to Mr. Arko in passing that he’s trying to find an illustration job, and the man becomes suddenly far more interested in him. He seems convinced that Bucky can make a name for himself, which makes Bucky blush in a way he hasn’t since he’d been a boy. 

“Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but you haven’t even seen my art, and y’ seem pretty convinced.” Bucky is trying not to drop his gaze to his shoes, feeling a little overwhelmed in the fact that anyone is interested in his art besides Steve. Even his ma had seemed incredulous of him when he’d mentioned it to her. 

“It’s more than your art.” The mousy and bespectacled man has to look up at Bucky, but he sure knows a lot about art, more than Bucky feels like he’ll ever know. Steve would like him. 

“Art is as much about how you can sell yourself as an artist as the work you create,” Mr. Arko continues, thumbing through a catalogue of more art supplies than Bucky could possibly imagine. “If you can put up a good front, present yourself well, people will be interested.” 

Self-image isn’t really something that Bucky had considered in selling his art. Applying to a magazine didn’t necessarily mean he had to go in person and talk to someone. He wanted his art to speak for itself, but if no one saw it… 

Steve starts to send back sketches in his letters, a field in what looks to be Austria, furrowed with the remains of trenches on both sides of the border, a bundle of tents casting long shadows on the ground, a rain-soaked street that could have been literally anywhere in England. Most of his letters are short -- and even without the censor’s office going through them with a fine-toothed comb, there’s only so much Steve can say. In return Bucky sends him newspaper clippings, a list of upcoming exhibitions at the MET and the MOMA, and even a formal invite to Becca’s wedding that she’d written herself. Bucky gets a kick out of imagining Steve kitted up in his Cap outfit at Becca’s wedding. 

He’ll have to see if his nice army duds still fit. 

 

 

By the time that August is coming to a close Bucky is feeling more than slightly listless. The apartment is unbearably hot, and it seems all of his ideas have been cooked out of his brain. He’s been spending increasing amounts of time lying on the floor and contemplating his sketches and paintings scattered about. Maybe Steve can help him figure out what he’s missing. There’s something of his lover in every face that looks back at him. They’re not perfect likenesses -- some are closer than others -- but they all have the strong cheekbones and soft eyes of the man he loves. He wonders idly if anyone would notice the outpouring of love that seems to seep from them. Steve is the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen, and he’s willing to fight anyone that says otherwise; he deserves to be captured in a way that isn’t clad in a flag. 

Bucky has learned better than to try and help Becca and the rest of the women in his family with anything involving the wedding. He’d told them a few weeks ago that if they needed anything painted or anything heavy moved, that they knew where to find him. From Steve’s letters it’s still unclear whether he’ll be able to make it back to the States in time, but Bucky hasn’t lost hope. 

He hasn’t exactly been keeping up with his Army-regulated 5000 miles of running and walking and slop rations, but he doesn’t have to grunt and groan too much to get his dress uniform on. When he steps in front of the mirror he feels a strange dissonance in his chest. He remembers the first time he’d put this on, when Steve had seen him in it on his last night in New York. Now his hair is longer, curling in the front despite his cap holding it back. He looks more at ease. Is that true? It doesn’t seem possible without Steve by his side. Steve, who should be home any- 

As if he really could read Bucky’s thoughts, no sooner had Bucky mused when Steve might be back than he hears the key in the door. Bucky quickly backpedals away from it as Steve swings it open, a slow smile spreading across his face as Steve continues to stare dumbly at him for a few long moments. 

“Wow - hey Buck, you look nice.” Steve looks exhausted, despite how glad Bucky is to see him. The bruise-like dark circles under his eyes speak volumes.

Without wasting another moment, Bucky steps forward again and crushes Steve in a hug, pulling him inside enough to close the door before giving him a kiss. The softness of Steve’s lips against his suffuses him with what he’s been missing these last few months. God but he’d missed him. 

The large bag and suspiciously ovular artist’s portfolio that Steve is carrying drop to the ground as Steve pulls Bucky more fully into his arms, carefully removing his hat and kissing him properly. 

“Hey…” Bucky manages to say once they pull apart again, feeling a tad light-headed but as happy as ever to have Steve back, safe and sound. 

“Hey yourself.” Steve is smiling, eyes crinkled around the edges, and Bucky feels his heart melting, “Glad to be home.” 

He shifts to hold Bucky at arm's length, looking him up and down. “You make that uniform look awful good.” 

Bucky lightly punches his arm, but he can’t quit smiling. “I’m just making sure it still fits. We gotta look nice for Becca’s wedding.” 

“Don’t know how she’ll feel about you stealing the show lookin’ like that.” Steve bats his eyelashes at him, and Bucky throws his head back to laugh. Two minutes with Steve already has him feeling like something close to who he should be. 

Bucky pulls Steve into another kiss, then takes a moment to press their foreheads together. “Missed you Stevie. Glad you’re back.” 

“Glad to be back.” Steve’s breath tickles over his lips and his eyes are so very blue this close up. 

“We gonna do this every time?” Bucky can’t stop smiling. He’s such a fool for Steve Rogers. 

“It’s not my fault that I come in here to you looking so nice.” Steve rakes his eyes down and back up again. “Though I’d imagine all that wool is already getting itchy.” 

Bucky sighs, rolling his shoulders to shrug off his coat. “Unbearably. Why did they have to make it all wool? My calves are sweating. I didn’t even realize my calves could sweat on their own.” 

Steve snorts out a laugh, bending to gather up his bag, and the tender moment passes for now. Regardless, Bucky can’t be happier to have Steve home. 

Once Bucky has managed to strip back down to his undershirt and boxers— taking the time to carefully hang his uniform— Steve has settled onto the couch, looking half-asleep already. 

“You look exhausted, punk.” Bucky sits beside him, letting Steve pillow his head in his lap, “You wanna tell me about it?”

Steve sighs happily as Bucky pets his hair. Before, Steve had never been so cuddly, but now it seems he’s just too tired to want to be tough all the time. It appears Bucky is the only person that ever got to see Steve turn off and relax. Poor guy has some serious weight on his shoulders. His hair has gotten longer too, and there’s stubble lining his jaw. Busy enough not to shave every morning then. Bucky doesn’t press him to talk, just keeps petting his hair. 

After a good long while of Bucky petting Steve like the world's largest cat, when his breathing evens out to that place just before sleep, finally Steve speaks. 

“Not all the rats went down with the Red Skull. We’ve been taking down all the small factions. It’s a big mess. Doesn’t help that the government is poking its nose into my business more and more now that the imminent threat of losing the war is gone. There’s a lot of people working on cleaning them up. We spent a long time trying to help people wherever we could when they sent us in to raid one of the small bases. Most of it is intelligence-gathering and paperwork. So much paperwork. I feel like I’m not helping as much as I should be.” 

“I don’t know that any of us expected to survive the war,” Steve continues, “Did you?” He doesn’t need Bucky to say anything to know the answer. 

“I never really planned for what might happen to Captain America once the war ended. There’s more I can be doing. Peggy is coming to the States at the end of the month to work more closely with Howard. They want to formalize the SSR into something more lowkey now that the war is over, and I plan to work with them. They’ve been giving me all the information while I was over there.” 

Bucky hummed in thought, looking at the sketches pinned to the wall above the drafting table. The man he’d depicted in his paintings, the  
Steve as he’d seen him, looked back. He wonders idly which one is actually closer to reality. The Captain, or this other iteration of Bucky’s.  
Maybe neither. 

“We can figure it out after Becca’s wedding. How long did they give you for leave?” 

Steve stares up at him. “Six months. They’re trying to decide who I should answer to now - the government higher-ups or the SSR. I hope Peggy wins.”

It’s easy to hear the myriad of emotions behind Steve’s words. It seems that it may be forever that he’s been operating at the whim of someone else. He’s either been a dancing monkey for the government, or a shield and a gun for the SSR. Bucky finds himself suddenly hating Captain America for what it had taken from his friend. Steve just wants to do what’s right, but now he has this… debt that he feels he needs to repay. He _had_ repaid it. He’d died in the Arctic for all intents and purposes, and now they were going to keep taking from him. 

Instead of voicing his opinions, Steve had just gotten home — he doesn’t need a fight about moral obligation right now, Bucky just leans down and gives him a kiss. 

“Why don’t I make us some dinner?” 

[](http://fs1.directupload.net/images/180618/olzolyuv.jpg)  


 

The day of Becca’s wedding is the day the unbearably hot weather finally breaks. It’s nearly idyllic, soft fluffy clouds drift high overhead, and the breeze ruffles Bucky’s hair as he leans out onto the fire escape to finish his cigarette. It’s easy to enjoy the sensation of the sun across his shoulders, his suspenders pushed down around his waist as he takes the last few pulls from his smoke before he has to get ready. Steve is getting ready first, and has banished Bucky to the roof so that they didn’t get distracted -- but really who could blame Bucky for getting a little side-tracked by Steve in his dress uniform? He’s only human; anyone would want to jump Steve when he looked so nice. Now Bucky’s going to have to survive the whole wedding and present himself accordingly, resist the urge to grab Steve’s ass or stare too longingly at his broad chest. Maybe he needs another smoke. 

“Buck! Your turn!” Bucky looks down over the edge of the building to see Steve poking his head out the window. Bucky gives him a cheeky grin and a wave. 

In a show of tremendous personal strength Bucky does not jump Steve as soon as he gets into the apartment. 

“Damn Stevie, you make that uniform look good.” Bucky pulls him into a chaste kiss, raking his eyes down Steve’s unfairy neat outfit. All he wants to do it pull that jacket off him, muss his hair, maybe pop his fly open and- 

“Stop eyeing me up me and go get dressed. You’ll make us late.” Steve winks at him, “The sooner we get there the sooner we can graciously make an escape.” 

“You saying if I’m good you’ll fuck me in that uniform? Because I’m interested.” Bucky sways his hips as he goes to the bedroom, looking back to wink at Steve over his shoulder. 

Steve lets out a long-suffering sigh just as Bucky pushes the door closed. Oh yeah, he was getting Steve out of that uniform tonight. 

Once he’s dressed he has to bat Steve’s hands away from him. The wool is going to make his skin crawl all day as it is, but he can tell from the hungry way that Steve is looking at him that he doesn’t look half bad in it. He’s no Captain America, but Bucky knows how to comb his hair. 

“Your tie is crooked. Lord, Steve, what would our mothers say.” Bucky’s fingers linger on Steve’s chest longer than they really need to, but the chime of the clock makes them both jump apart. Okay, they’re really going to be late if they don’t hurry. 

Bucky has no taste for what a nice wedding is like, but he thinks that Becca’s is beautiful. She’s a vision in her dress, and she hasn’t stopped smiling since Bucky linked arms with her to accompany her down the aisle. He leans in to give her a gentle hug once they reach the altar, kissing the side of her head and trying not to mess up her hair. 

“You look beautiful, Becs.” He can’t help but smile for himself, stepping aside to take his place next to his sisters. Sarah and Winnie had argued over who got to be the flower girl -- Sarah had won. 

Steve’s smiling like a goober from the front row of pews. There aren’t a lot of folks, but everyone that was important was there. Bucky’s ma has taken a tight hold on Steve’s hand and looks a moment away from crying. 

Charlie even cleans up nice, and he can’t stop gazing at Becca like she’d hung the moon. Bucky couldn’t be happier for them. He finds Sarah leaning against him as the priest spoke, and he takes her hand briefly to give it a squeeze. She’s getting so tall. Everything it seems was moving faster and faster. 

Bucky feels pleasantly giddy as he passes Becca back to her new husband as the next song starts. By the time he’s danced with Sarah and Winnie and his mother, he’s ready for a break, parched and a bit dizzy, but happier and more at peace than he can remember being in a very long time. Today’s been a good day. Sarah finds Steve next, and Bucky watches from one of the spindly chairs as he spins her around gracefully. Well, that’s sure something. Seems science has finally fixed Steve’s two left feet. Bucky helps himself to another drink while he waits for the song to end.

Once Steve can excuse himself graciously he immediately beelines for Bucky, snagging himself a drink on the way over. Bucky wants to kiss him, actually lifts his chin out of habit, but quickly remembers himself and drops his gaze back down. 

Steve pulls a chair over next to him, and Bucky still thinks he’s too far away. He looks so good, fills out his dress uniform in a way that honestly should be considered obscene, and now his cheeks are pleasantly flushed, and he’s smiling so softly at Bucky, and god but Bucky loves him. 

“Don’t leave again.” Bucky blurts out before Steve can say anything. 

“What? I was just dancin’ Buck. Wasn’t that far-”

“You know what I mean.” Bucky twists to set his drink on the table behind him. “Don’t go back to the SSR, just stay here.” 

“Bucky…” Steve looks like he’d rather have this conversation anywhere but here, but damn it they’re gonna. 

“We both know you don’t want to go. So don’t.” 

“It’s not a matter of wanting or not.” Steve’s straightened his shoulders, pushed his jaw out. “It’s my duty.” 

“You’re fulla shit. Your duty ended when you dropped yourself in the Arctic!” Bucky doesn’t realize how loud his voice had gotten until Steve looks around nervously. Bucky wants to scream, his good mood had completely evaporated. Maybe he’d had a little too much to drink. 

“Buck…” Steve’s trying to keep him from making a scene, but honestly why shouldn’t he? It doesn’t matter what Bucky does, Steve’s going to leave — he’s going to leave again and keep leaving, and Bucky has really lost him, even though he’s sitting right in front of him. 

“Um, excuse me…” 

Both Bucky and Steve jump as a pair, looking up guiltily at Charlie who has peeled himself away from the party to talk to them. 

“Hey uh, sorry, Charlie.” Bucky pushes his hair back off his forehead from where it had started to come loose from the pomade, trying to school his face into a more neutral expression. 

Steve has gone silent, but is putting on his best innocent face for Charlie. 

Charlie looks a bit like he regrets coming over to talk to them, but he holds out a business card to Bucky with a date an address scribbled on it. “I hear you’re still looking for an illustration job. One of my friends heard about a conference of sorts uptown. This year’s was canceled on account of the war ending, but they do it every May. Guess you can bring some work and all the big name guys from the magazines will be there looking for talent. Figured you might be interested.” 

Bucky blinks at him, but quickly sits up to take the card. “Wow, thank you. I don’t… wow.” This is an _actual_ opportunity to do something with himself if someone liked his work! “Thank you, Charlie.” Bucky makes sure to slip the card safely into his inside breast pocket. No chance is he going to lose that. 

Charlie gives him a smile as Bucky stands properly to shake his hand. “That’s what family is for, right?” 

Bucky laughs, yanking Charlie forward into a hug before letting him step back. “Yeah, thanks again.” 

Steve claps him on the shoulder when Bucky flops back down, and Bucky gives him a look. That argument might be tabled for now, but it’s not going away. 

There is a man at their apartment when they get home that night, holding an envelope addressed to Steve. Orders. He ships out in the morning. Bucky feels sick to his stomach. 

Bucky tacks the business card to the board over his desk, pulling his jacket off loosening his tie. He’d planned to pick up their argument where they’d left off, can see Steve out of the corner of his eye visually preparing himself for whatever rebuttal Bucky might come at him with. It makes him tired. Bucky doesn’t want to fight anymore, not with anyone and especially not with Steve. His arm aches in a way it hasn’t in months, and he eventually has to give up and ask for Steve’s help getting out of his buttons. 

Thankfully Steve doesn’t bring it up, and Bucky is more than happy to let Steve fuck him until they’re both too tired to keep their eyes open. It’s a tense kind of calm, like the quiet before a storm breaks, or a clap of thunder rolling through the sky, but Bucky will take it for now. 

Some time after Bucky drifts off, he gets an elbow in the ribs and rolls over to whine at Steve for waking him, only to realize that he’s far closer than he had thought. Steve shushes him gently, voice soft and full of emotion, and Bucky isn’t quite sure what to do with that. 

“I want to move someplace nice.” Steve whispers, the air around them thick with the residual warmth of the day and their own heat. 

Bucky’s sleepy brain is slow to make sense of Steve’s words. “You wanna move?” 

Steve presses his forehead against Bucky’s. “I don’t want you to go through another winter here. Being able to see your breath in the morning inside your own home is just the worst.” 

Bucky can’t help but chuckle softly. “You got any ideas? I guess being Captain America must come with enough benefits to buy a nicer place.” 

“I’m serious, Buck. Think about it, a place with an actual view, maybe even near Prospect Park if you wanted.” 

Bucky grins. “The park? I think they’re over-paying you if you think we can afford to live near the park.” 

Steve puts his arm around him and pulls him closer. “Okay maybe not that fancy, but at least somewhere that has proper heat. And a nice room for you to do your art in. Somewhere in Brooklyn.” 

Bucky sighs softly, curling up and putting his head into the dip of Steve’s shoulder. “Sounds great, Stevie.” 

Steve’s suggestion of moving completely escapes Bucky by morning, when he’s forced to wish Steve well and watch him pack up again, both of them sour with the whole situation. Bucky knows that Steve doesn’t want to leave, but he’s going anyway. They both know it.. 

The next few weeks find Bucky moping around his apartment for lack of anything better to do. He knows he should work on his pieces for the exhibition, but he feels like he’s failing to thrive without Steve there. His sisters and his ma are busy with their own lives, and he doesn’t want to bring them down. He falls back into the habit of smoking too much, but it brings him some kind of peace as he sits in the quiet apartment with the music humming softly from the radio under the window. He sketches and sketches and tries to come up with something to show for the exhibition. 

The MET folks are happy to see him again when he goes to look at their new exhibitions. They have continued the small show of “Work by Soldier-Artists”, and as much as he knows he should look, could probably find some camaraderie in their work, he avoids that corner of the room, his stomach turning at the thought. What would they do if he submitted one of Steve’s drawings? Or his own? He hadn’t drawn while he was serving, couldn’t imagine what he would have wanted to capture, but Steve’s field sketches are gorgeous. It seems that a lot of the upcoming shows focus on the aftermath of the war, and it leaves somewhat of a bad taste in Bucky’s mouth. The last thing that he wants was to remember any of that. However, he’s extremely interested in the Renaissance drawings. 

It takes Steve a few weeks to write back to him, but Bucky sends him letters whenever he can think of something to say. They send Steve back to Europe but not to where he was hoping. His letters are increasingly distraught at the idea that there are still so many people that aren’t home.

 

_Hey Buck,_  
_I hate doing this, and they know it. Peggy has come to DC to set up the SSR in a new iteration, they want to call it SHIELD. She and Howard asked me to be part of it and I trust them to have me doing more than shaking hands with senators under the guise of helping the boys that have finally come home. There’s still people stuck in Europe and they keep me from helping them. I hate it. I miss you. They managed to pull some strings and I’ll be back in the action zone by Christmas, actually doing some good and not going to state dinners. I miss you.  
Steve_

 

 

A man shows up at Bucky’s apartment the same day as the first touch of frost over the city. He looks a bit lost, but insists that he’s here to help Bucky move. Bucky almost laughs in his face, but then his brain dredges up Steve’s insistence on them moving into a nicer place.  
Bucky had forgotten, and he’s covered in paint, and is he supposed to just pack everything up all at once? 

There must be panic written on his face because the man, who introduces himself as Ralph, waves his hands at him and quickly launches into explaining himself. 

“Sorry to spring this on you, I didn’t mean you had to move right this second, just that I’m here to help you move boxes and stuff when you’re ready. Oh, are you an artist?” 

A wave of defensiveness makes Bucky want to slam the door in Ralph’s face, but he contains himself, stepping back and letting the man inside. He seems innocent enough, but Bucky is sure that he can take him in a fight - he’s awful skinny. This is the guy that’s going to help him lug boxes? He realizes he may be overreacting a bit, and nervously wipes his hands on his makeshift apron as Ralph peers at his latest painting leaning against the counter to dry. 

“You do stuff for magazines?” Ralph asked, kneeling down to look more closely. 

Bucky relaxes his stance. “I’m hoping to. There’s a fair at the beginning of the year where I might get some work.” 

“This new place, have you seen it? It’ll be great for art - lotsa light. My sister is a painter, watercolor, and she’s always talking about light.” 

Ralph has a limp, and before Bucky can look away, Ralph catches him staring. 

“Sorry, I-” Bucky rubs his bad arm out of habit, forearm tingling as if to remind him that it was still there -- would never be completely normal. “Did you serve?” 

Ralph straightens. “I was a corporal in the 101st.” 

“Sergeant, 107th.” Bucky gives him a smile, hopes it reaches his eyes. It seems like ages already since he was excited about the army, “Glad to see someone that made it back mostly in one piece.” 

They fall into surprisingly easy conversation, Bucky clearing off enough of the counter for them to sit and eat some lunch. His ma didn’t raise him not to feed guests in his home, and Ralph is a nice kid. Younger than he probably should have been to be enlisting in the army, but seems to be a good guy. He promises to keep an eye out for boxes that are of a good size for Bucky to start packing. Apparently Steve had signed off their lease for the end of the year, but moving through the snow would be hell. Better early then. 

Ralph doesn’t ask about Steve, doesn’t ask about the fact that Bucky’s paintings all seem to depict similar men, or mention the fact that  
Bucky is almost thirty and unmarried, and he’s glad for it. 

It doesn’t take as long as Bucky had expected to pack up all his belongings. The biggest things are the bed and his paintings. Ralph manages to fashion him a pallet wood box for the art, so that there’s no way they can get crushed. 

Steve had written him a few days prior and wished him luck on moving in, promised he’ll be home as soon as he can, but that it would likely be a few more months. They’d gotten him all the way to Seattle on the west coast -- Bucky couldn’t imagine. 

On moving day, Bucky still hasn’t seen this new apartment. Ralph insists it’s amazing, and tells Bucky about the history of the area on the way. They take a cab north, with a delivery truck-turned-moving truck following them. It feels like too much to Bucky, he can’t believe that  
Steve really pulled out all the stops just to keep Bucky from having to move boxes on the subway. The jerk. He carries his army bag on his lap, full of clothes and his important documents, along with that special favor that Stark had given him when he’d been discharged. 

He really isn’t sure what to expect, but the building that they stop in front of is enough to make Bucky’s eyes widen. It’s a brownstone, like a real brownstone - not one that’s been sectioned into tenements. Bucky takes his bag when he gets out of the cab, gaping at Ralph as he digs the key out of his pocket and opens the door. 

Bucky feels dizzy when he steps inside. Steve had seriously bought them _this?_ Gorgeous is an understatement. Bucky wants to cry. There are real wood floors, with no nails threatening to poke up - and a picture window in the front room that has him agog in amazement. It seems cavernous, high ceilings and soft creme walls. Dark wood frames the doorways and matches the banister to upstairs. _Upstairs_. Just the front room is the size of their whole apartment in Red Hook, and Bucky feels overwhelmed just thinking about it. He’s supposed to live here? Clearly they’re over-paying his idiot. 

“Figured we could drop all the boxes in the front room if tha’s alright with ya.” Ralph is turning to go to meet the moving truck, and Bucky can’t do anything but gape at him. 

His offers to help move boxes are met with a gentle decline. The boys were paid to move him, and move him they would. It leaves Bucky free to wander through the upstairs rooms. There are two bathrooms. _Two!_. The third floor is just one huge room, the walls painted the same soft cream, with the windows bathing the whole space in warm light. Ralph explains that Steve had requested it be turned into a studio instead of an additional bedroom and sunroom. Who the hell had a sunroom? Bucky apparently. 

He ends up sitting on the floor in the front room, completely gob-smacked and overwhelmed. They were going to need more stuff to fill even a quarter of this huge house. 

“Did you make it up to the roof?” Ralph pokes his head into the room after he and his two companions finish stacking the handful of boxes in front of Bucky. 

Bucky feels like his eyes are going to pop out of his head. “You’re shitting me. There’s more?” 

Ralph just nods, making sure Bucky is following him. He unlatches one of the windows and swings the whole wall open to reveal a balcony and a ladder up to the roof. 

“You could plant a garden up here. Or really whatever you felt like.” Ralph leans against the banner set into the roof as Bucky stands dumbly and looks around at the view. This is too much. He will not cry in front of Ralph. He might have to punch Steve when the idiot gets back though. 

Bucky thanks Ralph and the other two guys, who are apparently brothers if their appearances are anything to go by. He digs in his pocket and tips them all the money he has on him, which really, compared to this, is a bit sad. Clearly he’s well on his way to being a kept man.  
Bucky ends up sitting in the front room again, wondering what the hell he was going to do with himself. 

 

 

The first thing that Bucky does the next morning in the new apartment is try and roll off the wrong side of the bed, promptly smashing his face into the wall and then falling off the far edge while he’s flailing around in pain. A great start to the day.  
He then remembers that there is zero food in the new icebox, and that he has to go out and feed himself. He could go home to his ma’s, but instead of a couple blocks he’s now almost a mile away. Not terribly far but maybe he should invest in a bicycle or something if he is going to make that trip often… one more thing to spend money on. He needed to sell some art. 

His family will probably go bonkers over the new apartment. Maybe he’d bring them over if they weren’t too busy. If he had enough pocket change he could even spring for a cab and pick up Becca. Her new apartment was right next to the rest of the Barnes’s anyway, it wouldn’t be a stretch. 

Bucky ghosted through the house, unpacking the boxes out of boredom more than anything. Sooner than he expected he was out of boxes, and almost all of the cabinets and closets were completely empty. Steve was going to get a real punch to the face when he got home, who did he think he was, spoiling Bucky like this? If it made Bucky feel warm inside he wasn’t going to say it. As nice as it was not to worry about falling through the floorboards he as egged by guilt. His whole family could live here in comfort, not just him. 

After lugging all his art supplies up to the top floor Bucky opened the windows, pulling the floor to ceiling patio windows open as much as he could to let the air in. It was cool today, looked like it might even rain. They’d need to get some curtains to keep the sun out during the hot parts of the day or this room would turn into an oven. He had stuffed a notepad into his back pocket to scribble the things that the house needed, pulling the pencil from behind his ear to scribble _tall curtains_ underneath _floor wax_. Like hell he was going to ruin these beautiful floors. 

By afternoon Bucky is starving -- had forgotten to eat at all in his rush to unpack -- so he ventures out to the neighborhood, putting on his best shirt so that he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb amid all these rich people. He finds a deli tucked in between buildings the next street over that serves real corned beef, and he orders more than he probably needs. People seem friendly enough, can’t seem to tell that he’s far out of his element in this part of town. He has enough change in his jar to get food for a while, so that he won’t have to go out unless he wants to. 

The house is nice, but it doesn’t feel like it’s his. Maybe the feeling will come with time, or perhaps he’ll always feel like he’s in someone else’s house. He misses Steve terribly all afternoon, wishing he wasn’t quite so alone in this big house. 

Bucky’s life falls back into a rhythm. As soon as he can, he makes sure to get his mail forwarded to the new address, and is greeted at the end of the week by a letter from Steve. It’s much of the same, Europe is still a mess and Steve is being told to do things he doesn’t want to do. Good thing that the government can’t get away with court martialing Captain America, or Steve would be out on his ass. Steve doesn’t mention SHIELD, probably can’t, but Bucky had gotten a letter from Peggy -- much to his surprise -- that had told him he has a place if he wants. He considers it for a heartbeat, throwing himself back into the front lines, but the thought repulses him. If it wasn’t fighting to keep Steve safe, he wasn’t interested. Call him a coward, but if he never has to see blood again in his life it will be too soon. Just the thought of going back to work for SHIELD leaves him in as bad of a state as his first week home. He sleeps on the couch in the front room, the shabby one from their old apartment, curled into himself and trying not to shake apart with the force of his memories. 

It gets easier for him over the next six months. Steve had been right about the winter; it’s record-breaking cold, and he likely would have frozen to death in their old place, not to mention if he’d had Steve from before with him. New Steve could probably lie in the snow and sink through it like a hot iron. Okay, maybe not. 

Bucky finds small jobs to make enough money for food, tries to be cordial and friendly to his new neighbors. Mrs. Clark from next door has him paint a portrait of her daughter, which he finds both flattering and extremely boring. He hears the gossip of the neighborhood and is surprised to hear that there has been a string of break-ins a few blocks over. He had assumed that he was far from that now, but clearly there are still people looking for more than they have, and are willing to steal for it.

The deadline for the art exhibition looms, and Bucky throws himself into painting with renewed focus. This is his chance, and he is not going to mess it up. It becomes hard to notice the time passing. He’s drawn out a calendar for himself and put a big red circle over his last work days. His paintings need time to dry before he can schlep them to the exhibition hall. 

If not for his family he would likely become a complete shut-in. After he shows them the house, he can’t seem to keep them away. Not that he would want to. He would never begrudge the company, and it seems he always has one of his family members somewhere in the house on any given afternoon. His ma comes to cook them all Sunday dinner every week, and even Becca often drops by, sometimes with Charlie, sometimes without. When Bucky mentions that they’re all welcome to stay, his ma kindly declines, much to Sarah’s indignation. Bucky knows better than to argue with his mother, though he doesn’t understand. 

Months pass this way. Winter blows over into a wet spring and Bucky’s arm aches with the damp air. Winnie starts to spend more and more time up on the roof, finding a personal calm in trying to coax life into the garden boxes that Bucky has built out of scraps of wood that he’d collected building stretcher bars. They aren’t the best, not terribly square, but they spend days hauling dirt up to them and getting seeds to start. It’s nice to go up there and see the little green shoots. Even if nothing comes of it, it gives Winnie something that is hers, and that’s enough to make Bucky happy. 

Sarah bakes Bucky a birthday cake without any help, it is without a doubt the worst cake that Bucky has ever had, and he eats the whole thing with a smile, even after Sarah tells him he doesn’t have to. 

Captain America starts to show up in newsreels again. Especially after the upset in January when the government has to admit that they aren’t going to get everyone home as fast as they’d promised. Bucky shells out any extra pennies he has to go to the shows to see Steve. Even if it’s just a glimpse. Steve writes in his letters about the newsreels and photographers, mostly how much he dislikes them, and Bucky can see it. Steve never takes off his helmet anymore, doesn’t want to talk to the interviewers, avoids facing or speaking to the cameras. It’s clear that he’s lost a lot of the initial spark of being America’s Golden Boy, and it grates on Bucky to see him this way. He misses Steve, his Steve, and for brief flashes he absolutely hates Captain America. 

 

[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/977tonzb.jpg)  


By the time that spring has started to edge over into summer Bucky has filled every scrap of canvas that he owns. Steve sends his love in a letter that once again delays his return. Bucky had been hoping that Steve would be back for the exhibition, but now it seems he won’t be back for at least another few months. Bucky feels about ready to jitter apart the entire week leading up to the exhibition. He carefully finds his best shirt and slacks to wear, even digging out a tie from the back of his closet, and wrangling his hair into more of a shape. He knows that there isn’t anything he can do besides present himself well and hope, but he still feels shaken and a bit sick as he packs his best pieces to take to Manhattan. 

The subways is packed, and he feels as if everyone is staring at him as he fidgets in his seat. The last time he’s been this nervous had been facing down enemy artillery. But, this is something he can do. No one was going to shoot him for getting this wrong. Hopefully. 

He takes a deep, steadying breath before he walks into the exhibition hall, shoulders back and head up. If nothing else, he will present himself well, not shake apart under the pressure.

There are a lot of people here, and a nice woman at the front desk greets him with a professional smile. 

“Good morning, sir. Are you an exhibitor?” She eyes the small paintings and foldable easel tucked carefully under his arm, which Bucky sets gingerly down on the desk to free up his hands. 

“Yes. I assume I need to sign in?” He gives her his best smile in return. The old Bucky would have flirted with her, given her a compliment on her hair and another charming smile, but he’s not here for that today. He’s nervous enough as it is. 

“You just need to fill out this paperwork. Your number is 107.” 

Bucky chuckles privately to himself, but takes the card with the neatly written block number and tucks it into the back edge of his canvas so he won’t lose it. She gives him a handful of papers to fill out and a pen, and sends him off to find a flat space to fill out the forms. He debates for the longest time how to sign himself in. The Howling Commandos had been in the papers, in newsreels; people know their names and that isn’t likely to die down. He doesn’t want his Army history to affect this… so he quickly scribbles J. Buchanan in the name line. Better to be named after a president than have to talk about his time in Europe. 

Once he has dutifully returned his forms, the receptionist points him to the main room , and tells him to set up around the edge of the room where his number is posted. Skirting around the room, Bucky tries to take stock of the other people that are there. He doesn’t stick out too much, though there are certainly people dressed much nicer than he is. He tries to block out the dull roar of so many people around him, locating his place and setting up his easel, making sure that his pieces are under the best light they can be. This room is ordinarily a parlor, if the chair and chaise lounge butting up into his space are any indication. He pulls the chair over so that he can sit. The heavy curtains are drawn over the windows and the room is starting to get hot already. Now he has to wait for his turn. There are chairs set up in the center of the room so that interested parties can sit and take notes while the artists present themselves, and Bucky tries not to fidget in his seat as he waits for someone to come to him. 

Sweat is prickling down the back of his neck and Bucky finds himself gazing at the other artists that he can see from his corner. There is a wide variety of skill and subject being displayed, and he’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse about his chances of being noticed. He’s entranced out that he almost doesn’t notice a pair of men approaching him. He quickly stands, smoothing out his jacket and giving them a smile. 

One of the men looks down at his clipboard and the other regards Bucky coolly. 

“J. Buchanan,” one of the men says, looking up from his papers. He’s wearing circular glasses that make him look like a startled deer with his thin face. “What do you have for us today?” 

Bucky has practiced his presentation, talked to each of his sisters about what to say, even Steve had helped him between letters. He says his bit, talks about his interest in the human form, emphasising volume with light. 

[](https://i.imgur.com/MXaqAJA.jpg)  


The other man, whom Bucky has pegged for bored, seems to take an interest, quizzing Bucky about color palette and clean composition.  
Bucky stays standing even as the men pull up some chairs to sit in front of him. It’s easy to find confidence in his work, as much as it ramps up his anxiety to put so much of himself out there for public display. Both men seem pleased with his presentation, and they tell him that they will be in touch. It’s not a guarantee of a job, but Bucky still has to resist the urge to jump up and down in excitement. 

By the end of the day, Bucky is exhausted and sore from standing in place, but filled with renewed energy. The bespectacled man from earlier catches up to him as he’s packing up and hands him a business card. 

“If you’re interested in designing some magazine inserts we would love to see you next week. Bring some more art samples and we can talk.” 

Bucky nods dumbly, staring at the card for a moment before remembering himself and giving the man a firm handshake and a thank you. 

Since Bucky is in the area, he decides to stop at the MET. It’s been a few weeks since he’s gone, and there are likely new shows. He tucks his paintings in with his easel to make them easier to carry the few blocks to the museum. It’s nice to stop at some of the long-running exhibits and look at them with fresh eyes. There is a large group of people in one of the front rooms, so he skirts around them into the smaller hall, only to freeze in place. 

He had missed the poster on the door but now he sees the words plastered on the far wall. 

 

_“Fine Arts Under Fire, photographs assembled by the editors of Life Magazine”_

 

It shows the destruction in Europe, focusing on historical buildings and the reclamation of the art that the Nazi’s had taken in their raids. Bucky feels both repulsed and drawn in, hands actually shaking as he looks at the photos. It throws him back in, back to the smell of ash in his nose and crawling through rubble looking for survivors. There’s none of that here, the shots framed to hide the death but emphasise the destruction. Bucky’s mind seems more than happy to fill in the surrounding details. 

His vision starts to tunnel suddenly, and he feels like he might faint. He steps backwards into a woman, murmuring an apology as he scurries out of the room as quickly as he can. He sits on a bench in the park outside, trying to pull himself together. He’s avoided the worst of the aftermath of the war, focusing on Steve in the war films instead of what had been going on around him. He has to put his head between his knees and breathe for several long moments to pull himself back to the present. Any good mood that the exhibition had left him in is completely gone, and he feels shaken loose. 

The house is blissfully empty when Bucky gets home. He knows he’s in no state to face his family. He mechanically shoves some food into his mouth and goes to bed as soon as he can, curling up in the big pile of blankets and trying not to dream of anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Links for anyone that's interested in that kind of thing:
> 
> [  PTSD and WW2](https://historyofptsd.wordpress.com/world-war-ii/)  
> [ propaganda ](https://www.pinterest.com/quinsippimercan/world-war-ii-public-service-announcement-psa-poste/?lp=true)posters.  
> [ Demobilization ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demobilization_of_United_States_armed_forces_after_World_War_II)post war.  
> Tumblr post on Steve/Bucky + Combat Fatigue: [ here ](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/111791497995/wintercyan-stoatsandwich-oh-my-goodness-i-have#notes)\+ link to the army [ pamphlet ](https://archive.org/details/PAM21-35)  
> Brooklyn ny 1945: a [ map ](http://www.1940snewyork.com)of 1940’s brooklyn (with all 116 neighborhoods of New York mapped out)  
> [ South Brooklyn](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/347427/bk08-profile.pdf) specifically, including the docks and red hook.  
> [ Brooklyn Heights](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/347423/bk04-profile.pdf), a bit more of a fancy neighborhood, where the boys new house is!  
> [ Who knows](http://paraxdisepink.tumblr.com/post/105050264549/bucky-barnes-is-canonically-a-draftee) if Bucky was enlisted or drafted. There seems to be conflicting info. 
> 
> What do you think? Last section up next! Drop me a comment below or hit me up on my [ tumblr! ](http://cryo-bucky.tumblr.com)


	3. 'til the end of the line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _klaxon_ This is the final chapter!  
>  I struggled with the best way to end things, so I hope that this is satisfying.  
> And as always this wouldn't have been possible without all the amazing help that I got, thank you everyone!  
> If you enjoy the art feel free to go and send [ Helene](https://misspaperjoker.tumblr.com) nice messages on her tumblr! She's a joy and this fic wouldn't have happened without her!

There’s someone in his house. Bucky doesn’t sleep deeply anymore, and he listens for a long moment to hear another floorboard squeak. He’s still feeling shaken from yesterday, and it’s completely dark outside, only the slightest stain of morning peeking over the horizon. There’s no way his sisters would be here this early, and he’d locked the door anyway. The memory of his neighbours mentioning break-ins two blocks over renews his conviction. 

They’re clearly trying to be sneaky, moving slowly. He rolls silently off the bed, a feat that would have been impossible on his old mattress, digging under the bed for his very secret SSR parting gift from Stark. It’s only seconds before he’s tightening his fingers around the barrel of his rifle and settling into a defensive crouch, shouldering his gun and letting the familiar calm wash over him the way it used to when he was in the theater. One breath. Two. The door creaks open and Bucky fires, the gunshot painfully loud in the small room. The ping of metal surprises him and he drops the rifle like it had burnt his hands. 

“Steve!”

“Jesus Christ, Buck, you could’ve shot me!” Steve peeks his head over the edge of his shield, and Bucky’s head snaps to the left to see the hole that the bullet had dug for itself in the brick wall beside them. 

“You weren’t supposed to be back for weeks, you punk!” Bucky is so relieved- Steve is here, actually here- but he’s still thrumming with adrenaline. 

Steve drops his shield against the doorframe and it clunks decisively. Bucky has no shame as he throws himself into Steve’s arms, clinging to his best guy and burying his face in his neck. 

“Hey, Buck.” Steve murmurs against his skin, pulling Bucky closer and squeezing him hard enough to leave Bucky wheezing.  
Bucky doesn’t complain though, burrowing into Steve’s chest like he wants to live there. 

“Hey, punk. Glad you’re back.” 

“Why do you have your rifle anyway?” Steve shifts to hold him at arm’s length, worry written on his face. “What if I’d been the milkman?” 

“Some milkman.” Bucky pulls him in for a kiss, “I don’t remember the milkman delivering to my room.” 

“Maybe he got lost.” Steve is grinning and gosh, Bucky has missed him.

“You’re the one that bought us a house that practically needs its own zip code.” Bucky pulls Steve onto the bed, ignoring his indignant  
noises and silencing him with another kiss. 

“You don’t like the house?” Steve is doing his best to sound wounded, but Bucky isn’t falling for it. 

“I love the house.” 

 

 

It’s easy to fall into a rhythm with Steve around. Steve thrives on routine now, they both do, and it makes Bucky’s life flow more smoothly.  
Apparently Steve had told the USO people he was going home, without much room for argument once they started talking about recruiting him again. The last thing that he wants is to go on another USO tour.

“So that’s what’s happened to your accent?” Bucky muses one morning over a bowl of oatmeal, absently stirring real brown sugar into it, “They gave you voice lessons?” 

Steve shudders, looking disgusted for a moment before throwing his arm out and putting on a booming radio voice. “No Rogers, you have to _project!_. No dropping syllables! Stand straighter! Lift this! Lift those!” 

Bucky is wheezing with laughter hard enough to be forced to put his spoon down for fear of choking on his breakfast. 

But Steve isn’t done, he stands, throwing both arms out. “Buy war bonds, or ketchup, or wall putty, because Captain America said so!” 

Bucky is red-faced as he tries not to fall off his chair. If these people had known anything about Steve Rogers instead of Captain America, they would be able to see what a ridiculous charade this was. But’s was the point isn’t it? To fool people with the Captain America schtick?  
No one cares that Steve had been the sickly, stubborn, punk from Brooklyn. They’d completely steamrolled that. Given him a shiny new body and a shiny new accent, and a whole new vocabulary of approved things to say. 

“They’d hate it if I got you back into your old ways, huh?” Bucky leans over to kiss him when Steve sits back down. 

Steve reaches for him, brushing his hair back from his forehead. Bucky’s let it get longer than before -- enough that he has to slick it back to keep it from hanging in his face. His ma does not approve. 

“They can do what they like to me.” Steve’s smirking now, that punk. “I’m a decorated captain, much to the Army’s chagrin. Not like they can take the muscles away now, or bring back all the guys we blew up.” 

“They deserved it, Hydra bastards.” Bucky’s arm tingles with phantom pain, doing its best to remind him that he could have been a lot worse off. If Steve hadn’t been the world's largest and most motivated idiot...well, he wouldn’t be here eating cereal in his new house with the man he loves. 

“What are you gonna do today?” Steve slathers butter on his bread as he talks, “I have to go to Federal Hall for some sort of...rally. I think it’s a rally.” 

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him and Steve ducks his head, abashed. “It’s definitely a rally. I’m bad at this stuff…” 

“You’ll need more than toast to take on politicians all day.” Bucky stands to dole out some oatmeal for Steve, grabbing their only other bowl from the rack by the sink. They’re slowly getting things for the house, but it’s still practically empty. 

Their lives sink into some semblance of what it had been before, if maybe a mirror image. Now it’s Bucky who spends most of his time inside, sitting in front of a canvas and trying to find some semblance of peace in his art. Steve, on the other hand, seems content to piss off as many people as possible, albeit mostly indirectly. Though not always. Steve has always been a direct person, not always blunt, but unwilling to hide how he feels about something. This tends to annoy politicians especially, doubly so when Steve is shaking their hand while doing it. 

Regardless of the political meetings that Steve is subjected to during the day, or the gratuitous appearances in the afternoons, they have dinner together as often as possible. Bucky still has little talent for cooking, but Steve never complains. They sit at the corner of the table, feet touching as they eat and talk about their day. 

Bucky thinks it might be some special kind of bliss. Just to have Steve here, to be present and be doing something he enjoys, Even if Steve regularly goes on steaming rants about the workings of the Truman Doctrine or the Marshall Plan. 

Work comes in steadily, much to Bucky’s surprise. He loses himself in it when his thoughts get too loud. It’s a secret thrill, a long-running joke now, to hide Steve in all the men that he paints. It’s a face that so many powerful people see, though usually hidden behind a mask and the deep voice that they hear on the radio whenever they can coerce Steve into speaking, that’s Captain America. The Steve that Bucky paints is his own, strong and stoic but softened at the same time. It’s almost embarrassing, the outpouring of love that Bucky can feel when he steps back from a piece and sees some new iteration of Steve staring back at him. Not all the men are the same, it’s not that he paints  
Steve exactly how he is, but he takes everything he studies and everything he knows and tries to put it all into a soft paint stroke. Steve is a very accommodating model, seems endlessly pleased that Bucky is becoming a “successful artist”, as he likes to point out every time that  
Bucky sends off a painting for print. 

That’s not to say that everything is perfect. They have bad days. Bucky’s arm sometimes acts up to the point where he can’t lift his wrist, or he has a listless day when he can’t bring himself to get out of bed, or even so much as look at a paintbrush. But he’s getting there. It’s frustrating when he feels useless in this way, but he knows he’s still learning to live with this new self that he’s dragged back with him from Europe. 

Steve though… Steve is a wreck. He’s always been unwilling to listen to his own body, had dragged himself out despite fever or pain, and tried to keep up with Bucky when he’d been small. Now he’s a 240 pound express train of a wreck. He’s good at faking it, admittedly better than Bucky, but Bucky can see right through him. Steve might be bigger now, but he’s still the same guy on the inside. Or not quite the same, the way Bucky isn’t the same. 

It’s a rare night that Steve sleeps more than a handful of hours. Most mornings Bucky wakes only as Steve is coming back from the gym on 14th, looking wrung-out and haunted. 

They’d renamed it “battle fatigue”, but Bucky didn’t give two shits what they called it. Ghosts and horrors hid behind Steve’s eyes on those early mornings, and Bucky knew that sometimes he looked the same. 

They don’t talk about the war, and on those mornings Steve never wants to talk about anything at all, just butts his head into Bucky’s shoulder as Bucky stands over the stove to make them breakfast, clinging to Bucky’s back like he wants to never let go. Bucky would be lying if he said it wasn’t nice to feel so needed, but he’d rather have Steve happy and healthy. Before he might have been an angry little shit with a list of heath problems, but he’d been happy and hopeful about himself, about the people around him. Now he’s just... tired. 

Not for the first time in the ensuing months Bucky finds himself hating Captain America, hates the front that Steve has to put on with his star-spangled outfit and pretend all day to be. Bucky can see the way that it drains him, and more times than not Steve comes home frustrated and angry. Bucky’s never been one to back down from Steve, no matter what he’s like, and he’s willing to be just as stubborn when it’s something he knows needs to be said. 

This tends to get them arguing, sometimes rather loudly.

“That’s completely absurd! Are they forcing you to do this?” Bucky has stood from his place at the table, gesturing in a good approximation of one of Steve’s rants. “You told them no right? SHIELD Director? That’s-” Really he doesn’t know what that entails, but from the way that  
Steve had said it, lets it lie between them like a dead bird in a gutter, Bucky knows Steve found it distasteful. 

“What do you want me to to, Buck?” Steve is trying to keep his cool, but Bucky knows he’d just love to have something to hit right about now, “I traded everything for this- to be Captain America. And now… it’s not enough.” Steve’s fists are clenched, but his eyes are sad. It hurts Bucky’s heart. 

Anger courses through Bucky, real, hot anger that burns away everything else. Steve isn’t _listening_ to him. “You’ve never lain down for anyone or anything in your life. You did what they asked of you, you stopped the war. Tell them you want out if it’s what you want!” 

“I don’t know what I want!” Steve slams his hands down on the table hard enough for it to creak and groan, his shoulders hunching up to his ears as he sinks into himself. 

“You don’t...know?” Bucky pulls out his chair and flips it around to sit backwards on it, processing Steve’s words as if they’re in a foreign language. Steve always knows. Has always had an opinion or had known what action needed taking, even before he was the captain of their squad. It shouldn’t surprise him so much; Steve is human and is perfectly capable of indecision. But it throws Bucky off - watching Steve be unsure of himself is not something he’s used to. 

“What do _you_ want, Steve? What will make you happy?” 

“I don’t know.” Steve says more to his hands than to Bucky. 

[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/jtnay7yt.jpg)  


 

 

Much to Bucky’s surprise, his work continues to gain attention. He gets not one but two different interviews to work at an actual advertising firm, and it seems they want him to design advertisements for everything from soup to sports cars. No one has caught on that the dapper blond with the strong jaw that features in many of his works is a face they have seen before, and it gives Bucky a little personal thrill each time. Steve seems happy to collect Bucky’s illustrations out of magazines and advertising boards, and Bucky gets the added bonus of teasing Steve that someday maybe someone will recognize him. No one does, mostly because Steve stays out of the public eye much more these days. 

Steve still goes on SHIELD missions, still comes home exhausted and tired of the politics and the paperwork that has to be done every time. He wants to help people, and it’s hard to see that when he’s running a stealth mission or spying with orders not to engage. He’s no good at that. 

Steve gets a whole month off for Christmas, or that’s what he says, and Bucky believes him, as they curl up in their marginally more furnished living room in front of the fireplace. 

“They want me to do a cover for the Saturday Evening Post.” Bucky says. He’s been holding it in all day, despite his excitement. “Said if it goes over well I can do another in a few months.”  
Steve beams at him, gathering him into his arms and pressing a kiss to his temple. “That’s amazing, Buck! Do you know what you’re going to do?” 

“There are themes I can pick from. It should be fun.” Bucky relaxes into Steve’s chest, soaking up the warmth from both sides, between the fire at his front and Steve behind, he’s definitely going to be toasty. 

“There’s supposed to be a bad blizzard this week.” Steve rests his chin on the top of Bucky’s head, gazing into the fire. “So you’ll be stuck with me at home.” 

“What a tragedy.” Bucky twists to give him a kiss. “You could do some art with me if you wanted. That studio is plenty big for us to both work.” 

Steve hums gently, an indecisive noise. “I haven’t drawn anything in a while… but it couldn’t hurt to try.” 

“I have plenty of paint.” Bucky had been worried initially about creating so much work when oils were so expensive, but before he could even voice his concerns, he had begun to get stipends that were specifically for supplies, and now he has more paint than he knows what to do with. He’d even gotten a few tester tubes from up-and-coming companies trying to get artists to try their brand. It felt like too much, but he wasn’t going to complain. 

They pass through the rest of December and into January that way, sharing the huge studio space that Steve had insisted on. It makes  
Bucky’s studies easy, he just sketches Steve as Steve works, and quickly the walls around his canvas are filled with rough Steves puttering around the house or washing dishes or battering the reinforced punching bag that had been a gift from Howard. 

As soon as the snow starts to melt, Steve and Bucky make regular trips to Central Park. Steve seems endlessly entertained about going out and still no one recognizes him. Bucky sometimes fantasizes that they can live like this forever. Maybe someday he can hold Steve’s hand in public. They both put on a good show when they’re out. This is one act that they had perfected. Best friends, close pals, but nothing more.  
Can’t be, not where people could see them. Even being Captain America doesn’t give you a pass to be a fairy. Probably would hang an even heavier noose around Steve’s neck in fact, but Bucky isn’t going to be the one to blow it for him. They can play this game. 

Steve prefers the MOMA to the MET, much to Bucky’s chagrin. It’s not that Bucky finds modern art _bad_ , but he isn’t a fan of the movement away from recognizable forms and scenes to… blobs and brush strokes. Steve however is completely enamoured with the washes of color, bold shapes and gesture lines, and Bucky can understand Steve’s attraction. It doesn’t mean he likes it, but he understands.  
By the time spring is in full bloom Bucky has made five more covers for the Saturday Evening Post, and he’s proud of the place he’s made for himself. 

In May Steve comes back from a mission in north Africa beaten to a pulp. Even with his healing throughout the trip home, he still looks like he’d been run over by a train. He whimpers the whole night, cradling his ribs as they knit back together, and Bucky has to re-break his arm to get it to set straight. Bucky can’t even be angry at him, he’s just worried. Steve might be bigger and stronger but he’s still human. Hasn’t it been enough? 

Steve spends the next day sprawling out on the couch that he’d dragged up to the studio the week before -- despite it being far too small for his current bulk -- while Bucky sketches and bounces ideas between them for future works. 

“I invited Peggy for dinner next week.” Steve pipes up after they break for lunch, looking much less like a sad, abused puppy now that he’s had some food and a decent nap. His bruises are nearly gone already, but that doesn’t stop him from lying across the area rug -- they have one of those now -- as he nibbles on crackers. 

“You think we can make something she’ll actually be willing to eat?” Bucky looks up from tuning the radio as the soft sounds of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet fills the room, “I’d hate to make her turn her nose up.” 

Steve rolls over onto his back. “I figured I’d make a ham. I don’t know if she likes ham, but who doesn’t like ham?” 

“Jewish people,” Bucky says and then dodges the pillow that Steve throws at him. 

“If you’re going to be smart, no ham for you.” Steve scoots close enough to feed Bucky a cracker. “You get to decide on what we have with it since you’re so full of opinions.” 

[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/uoaw4yzv.jpg)  


They spend the rest of the day between Central Park and the surrounding art museums. Steve talks animatedly about the things that Rockwell and Pollock are doing, and laments the inevitable closing of The Art of This Century gallery in Manhattan. 

Bucky has to spend a few anguished hours that evening at the printing shop making sure his pieces are ready to be transferred into magazine layout. By the time he gets home Steve has apparently recovered enough to be stretching himself a canvas in the studio, if the thumping and cursing that Bucky hears are anything to go by. 

“What on earth are you going to put on a canvas that big?” Bucky asks, as he stares down at Steve who’s wrenching the canvas on the stretcher and stapling it into place. He’d broken more than one set of stretcher bars early on, trying to get his canvases too tight. The canvas that Steve is currently involved with must be as big as he is tall, if not more, and at least twice as wide. It will likely take up the entire far wall when he’s done. 

“I want to work on something big.” Steve says simply, “I got some house paints and some Magna paints; they’re artificial, and apparently are different than oils.” 

Bucky perches next to him and digs through the paper sack of supplies that Steve has brought home. “You’re really into this new-age art stuff.” He remembers the abstract sketches that Steve had been been doing whenever he’d been home. Bucky can’t make heads or tails of them, splashes of color and shapes that are nearly recognizable, but not quite. Sometimes late at night when Steve can’t sleep he’ll disappear upstairs and Bucky will find piles of crushed up sketches in the small trash can by the drafting table.  
Steve mutters something indistinct, but Bucky pushes on, scooting to lean against him and hand him tacks as he needs them.  
“I like the colors.” Steve finally says. “Before...I couldn’t hardly see any of them. Mostly just green and brown. Now there’s so much…” Steve meets his gaze for a moment before he looks away again, “I want to make sense of it.”  
Bucky knows he’s not just talking about the new colors he can see. If art helps Steve work through his experiences in Europe, then more power to him. No one ever has to see it. Not even Bucky, if Steve doesn’t want him to.  
Bucky doesn’t push any more, just presses a kiss to Steve’s cheek and keeps handing him tacks to finish his canvas. 

 

Bucky ends up making scalloped potatoes for their dinner with Peggy, covered in as much cheese as he can manage, and if they’re maybe a little thick, Steve doesn’t say anything as he puts them in the oven. 

The tinny chime of the doorbell announces Peggy’s arrival, and Bucky jumps up from the sofa in the sitting room to answer the door, having spent the last few hours a nervous wreck. It isn’t that he didn’t like Peggy, she’s a great woman. She’s also gorgeous and intelligent, and one of the heads of a powerful government agency, and maybe she intimidates him a little. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s clearly moony over Steve. 

“Good evening, Sergeant Barnes.” Peggy looks as lovely as Bucky remembers, her hair neatly curled and A-line dress free of wrinkles. Even in a war-zone Peggy had looked pristine, and Bucky was glad to see nothing had changed. 

“Hey, Peg,” Steve calls from the kitchen, poking his head out into the hall. Bucky steps aside to let her in. 

Bucky resists the urge to shoot Steve a look, turning his best smile on Peggy instead. “Call me Bucky; I’m not a sergeant anymore.” 

“Very well, Bucky.” Peggy shrugs off her shawl and hangs it on the coat rack that Steve had liberated from the dumpster behind Macy’s and repainted. Just because they have money now doesn’t make it easy to let go of having been frugal their whole lives. 

“Dinner should be almost ready.” Bucky wonders if he should give her a tour of the house, but that only makes him remember the mess that’s awaiting him in the studio, and in the extra bedroom-turned-Steve’s workout space. Maybe not. 

Peggy saves him from having to decide by heading straight for the kitchen. “It smells lovely in here. I’m surprised you haven’t invited me over before.” 

Bucky trails after her, watching Steve step away from the stove to kiss her cheek in greeting. 

“You’re a busy woman, and the SHIELD base is in DC. A four-hour train ride isn’t something you want to be making all the time,” Steve points out, grabbing a towel to pull Bucky’s potatoes out of the oven. 

Bucky does not sulk at the kitchen table. Mostly. He’s not a child. Steve and Peggy have loads to talk about between SHIELD and their respective duties. Peggy doesn’t seem concerned about sharing secrets around Bucky, and Bucky is interested in learning more about what Steve’s been doing for the last year. 

Taking down rogue Hydra cells seems to be Steve’s main concern, and Bucky can’t blame him. Here’s hoping Steve guts them all personally. 

“What have you been doing lately Bucky?” Peggy suddenly throws him into the conversation. She looks his way with an expectant expression as he hands her a plate piled with potatoes and ham. 

“Uh-” Bucky says eloquently and sits down next to Steve with his own plate, “I’ve been doing illustrations.” 

“Bucky did some covers for the Saturday Evening Post!” Steve exclaims, digging eagerly into his ham. 

“I had no idea you were artistic. I’d love to see some of your work.” Peggy gives him a genuine smile, and Bucky feels immensely guilty for being so sour. 

“Of course. I can show you some after dinner, if you want.” Bucky mentally runs through some of the things he wants to share, wondering which ones to avoid, and knowing a few to _definitely_ avoid. 

The atmosphere in the room settles into something comfortable and easy as they eat. Bucky has to admit that Steve’s ham turned out amazing, and he’s already thinking of the 1001 things they can make with the leftovers. 

Peggy tells him all about the things he’s missed since he had been sent home early from Europe. Steve had missed most of it too, busy being an idiot at jet speed, or rather crashing at jet speed. She tells them about the things Howard has been working on, about the people she works with at SHIELD. It seems that she’s happy to have a sympathetic ear to talk to, and Steve and Bucky are more than willing to indulge her. 

Once they’re done with dinner Peggy produces from her coat a pack of clove cigarettes and some sucking candy for Bucky, and a small bottle of scotch for Steve. Bucky never will understand why Steve likes it when it doesn’t do anything for him, but he supposes, why not? 

“Why don’t you get us some of the nice glasses from the front room Buck?” Steve suggests, looking up at him at he stands. “And your lighter is upstairs.” 

Bucky nods, scampering upstairs to find his lighter. He’s been trying to cut back on his smoking, but this is a treat. 

By the time Bucky has the glasses together and his lighter safely in his shirt pocket, he can hear arguing from the kitchen. He picks up the pace, blinking in surprise at the scene that greets him.

Peggy has stood up, her usually unflappable demeanor pushed aside. Now she just looks pissed, her eyes hard and her fists clenched. Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if she took a swing at Steve. “You can’t just quit!” 

“I don’t think you can really stop me.” Steve is trying to let her down gently, but his arms are crossed stiffly over his chest. He’s clearly not moving on this point, “If there’s something that you genuinely need me for, you can look me up. I’ll be an agent for you. Hell, for all we know, there could still be one or two Hydra guys kicking about that need their faces broken. But I’m done with this song and dance. I’m not one of your SHIELD assets, I’m your friend.” 

Peggy sinks back down into her chair, looking up at him. “Fine. If there’s a mission that piques my interest for you, I’ll send it your way. Can’t go getting too soft.” She sounds resigned, but everyone in the room knows their argument isn’t over. Would likely never be over.

“No more meetings with senators, and no more promotions.” Steve gives Peggy a crooked grin. “I’ll never be free of people telling me what to do, but as long as it’s you, I might not mind so much.” 

“I should have known you had ulterior motives for inviting me to dinner. Despite how delicious that ham is.”  
Bucky snorts out a laugh and they both turn to stare at him. He quickly puts his hand over his mouth, but his chest creaks with the effort of keeping his laughter in, his eyes watering. He quickly puts down the glasses on the table so he doesn’t drop them. It’s really not funny, and yet he’s practically doubling over trying to keep his laughter at bay. In the few long moments that it takes him to compose himself, Steve and Peggy exchange a look. They probably think he’s lost it. 

Once Bucky has contained himself he sees Steve grinning at him and breaks down all over again. He has to physically remove himself to the hall for a few minutes to get himself under control. Honestly he’s more relieved than anything: Steve is finally doing something for himself. He’s given up more than enough for Captain America. He deserves this. 

Peggy looks less annoyed when Bucky finally re-enters the dining room. She’s poured herself some of Steve’s scotch and is sipping it thoughtfully. “You really are dramatic, Steve. Calling me here just to have a big reveal that you want to quit being Captain America. You could have just told me the last time you were in DC.” 

“Steve always has to be dramatic.” Bucky chimes in, settling back into his chair and nudging Steve’s foot under the table. This will be good. For all of them.

 

 

Steve’s shield hangs in the dining room now, over the table. Steve had expressed wanting to keep it with him, and no one in their right mind is going to take it. So it hangs there, and the rifle that Howard had given Bucky when he left Europe sits in a rack over their bed upstairs. 

The majority of their walls contain art now. Not all theirs, but mostly. Some of Bucky’s friends at the print shop have traded him sketches and he keeps them safe in a case in their living room. The Saturday Evening Post has also sent him copies of the magazines he illustrated, and those Steve made sure were neatly organized in their bookcase. Bucky’s _Arrow Collar_ paintings are the newest ones, and he has all of those canvases neatly organized upstairs in case the office ever needs back printings. Their house finally looks like someone lives there. Bucky’s ma and Sarah have made them a beautiful quilt that lives on the couch and is just the perfect size for them both to fit under. Winnie has managed to gently nudge the plants on the roof into life, and now they have some herbs and even a few vegetables. 

If they’d ever noticed, no one has called Bucky on painting Steve into his ads, and it’s still a long-running joke between them. He’s also done a fair share of pieces featuring the other members of his family, and even one that could be argued to look like Peggy. It’s become a game to find models that inspire him. Besides Steve of course. He could still draw Steve all day. 

Steve has settled into his quieter life. It’s starting to climb into the hottest part of June, and Bucky has started worrying about what to do for Steve’s twenty-ninth birthday. When he’d been small, the doctors had all said that Steve would never see thirty, and would be lucky to make it to twenty-five. Now it’s not only possible but a reality that they both are facing. 

Bucky had turned thirty just a few months back, and it seems like a major milestone in his life despite, there being no real change from one day to the next. Steve’s hands have different calluses now -- so do Bucky’s -- and that is as much a realization of their new lives as anything. Steve doesn’t have to pick up his shield unless he wants to, and Bucky is content with a future that he’s made without having to kill anyone ever again. The blood on his hands can be replaced with the softness of a paintbrush, and maybe the stubborn stubble on Steve’s cheeks. 

Bucky squints at himself in the mirror as he trims his hair. He’s left the top long and trimmed the sides short, running his fingers through it to push it back from his face he wonders idly if Steve will like it. Steve has been talking about growing a beard, and Bucky is still on the fence about it. 

Thinking of his punk guy seems to summon him out of thin air, and it isn’t another moment before Steve knocks softly and pushes the door open. Bucky meets his gaze through the mirror. 

“Morning Buck.” Steve crosses the room and drapes his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to his cheek, “Meeting day?” 

“Yeah. Don’t want to look like a mess.” Bucky leans over the sink and ruffles his fingers through his hair to shake out the loose strands. Steve perches on the cushion in the corner and watches Bucky dust himself off. If his gaze lingers on the ugly marks on his left arm, Bucky doesn’t notice, too busy buttoning up his shirt and smoothing the wrinkles out of his jacket. 

“You ever wear one of those Arrow collars you make all the art for?” Steve’s smile is easy to hear in his tone; Bucky wants to kiss that smile off his face. 

“I might as well, I helped make them popular.” Bucky says as he straightens his sleeves, peering into the mirror to make sure he’d gotten all the paint off his cheek. 

“Get any more famous, and you can have me as a kept man.” Steve steps up behind him again, nuzzling at the back of his neck. 

“You’re the famous one, walking around wearing a flag, Besides, as if I’ve kept you from anything your whole life.” Bucky leans against him as he continues, “You’d better not wear one, or my secret will be out. Everyone will know Captain America is the Arrow Collar Man.” 

Steve’s laugh brushes across his shoulders and Bucky turns to kiss him.

[](http://fs5.directupload.net/images/180618/xlw75cd3.jpg)  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more research links: 
> 
>  “Steve Rogers isn’t just any hero” article [ here](http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/10/steven-attewell-steve-rogers-isnt-just-any-hero)  
> More info on Leyendecker [ here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Leyendecker) and [ here!](https://americanillustration.org/project/jc-leyendecker/)  
> MET [ exhibitions](https://www.libmma.org/digital_files/archives/Museum_Exhibitions_1870-2011.pdf) by year
> 
>  
> 
> What did you think? Are you happy with the ending? Did you find any of the research links interesting? Drop me a comment here or on my [ tumblr! ](http://cryo-bucky.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> And most of all thank you for reading!


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